Toy makers and foresters fight for Japanese wood

Japan's interior may be covered in thick forests, but the country is in imminent danger of losing touch with its proud, centuries-old traditions of wood craftsmanship, according to Ken Terauchi, a wooden-toy maker in Yokohama.

Foresters have quit their jobs and once scrupulously tended woodlands are falling into unproductive wilderness.

The neglect in the forests is not always obvious to the untrained eye, but for Terauchi, 47, it risks the death not only of an industry but also of an entire wood culture.

Terauchi's Yokohama-based company, which is known by his family name "Terauchi," has been making toys from domestic timber, such as Japanese Juda, beech, zelkova and hiba cypress, for more than half a century.

His father, Sadao, a 77-year-old toy designer, took on a team of local craftsmen in 1958, back in the golden age of domestic forestry when Japan provided about 90 percent of its own timber.

Thick plantations of Japanese cedars and hinoki cypresses were planted all over the country in the aftermath of World War II by a defeated nation desperate for raw materials.

Timber was seen as a vital part of the devastated nation's effort to rebuild itself.

But father and son have since watched their world slowly collapse around them. Cheap imported wood, which began to flood into the country following a liberalization of lumber import rules in 1964, have squeezed out Japanese lumber firms that must deal with substantial operating costs caused by mountainous terrain and relatively high wage bills.

Japan's thick forests now provide barely 20 percent of its needs. Terauchi, whose company has always stayed loyal to his father's original vision of fostering Japanese wood culture and craft, reached rock bottom three years ago when declining distribution of domestic wood forced him to use imported beech for his toys.

But there is a ray of light in the gloom. An innovative partnership with a forestry firm in Mie Prefecture has revived Terauchi's hopes and is allowing his company to work once more with Japanese wood.

Around the same time that Terauchi was being forced to resort to foreign timber, Junya Mizukoshi, sales manager at Moroto Forest Co. in Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, was growing alarmed about the shrinking market for his wood.

The company, which has been tending its forests since 1863, was suffering from weak demand. Mizukoshi began searching a way out, surfing the Internet, hoping to sell offcuts of hinoki cypress wood to buyers.

The company's century-old hinoki wood, grown on the Tanzawa mountains in Kanagawa Prefecture, is typically employed as a building material. But Mizukoshi suggested that Terauchi's toy factory could use the hinoki offcuts.

Terauchi accepted the challenge, even though he had never worked with the wood. Hinoki is a softwood, and the conventional wisdom is that hardwoods are best for woodwork.

It was a struggle at first. The wood had to be treated much more carefully than any hard wood, especially when planing or grinding.

But the unique qualities of the new material gradually seduced the craftsman. "Beautiful, delicate and difficult to please, hinoki is a very Japanese wood," he says.

He now makes a range of toys from the hinoki, including "friendship cars," on which wooden dogs and dolls ride, and smooth, rounded "baby blocks" for infants to grip. The softwood, he says, gives off a subtle wood aroma.

"You may not be able to afford to live in a wooden house, but you can easily touch wooden toys," says Terauchi. "I hope people will realize that wood is good and include it in their lives."

Terauchi believes it is essential to continue using Japanese wood, one of the country's few abundant raw materials, to maintain the forests that are the foundation of its ancient wood culture.

Terauchi's products can be viewed on the company's website (http://www.tenohiraehon.com/). For telephone inquiries, call Terauchi at 045-949-5670.