Lumber Provisioning in Early Modern Japan, 1580–1850

Abstract

The several hundred towns and cities ofearly modern Japan were wooden creatures with ravenous appetites for timber from the archipelago's convoluted mountain valleys. To meet urban demand for timber, Japanese lumbermen developed a complex provisioning system whose character changed as the centuries passed. Japanese lumber consumption developed in two distinct phases between 1580 and 1850. The first was a "boom" phase, from about 1580 to 1660, when the realm engaged in a vast amount of building. In part this boom entailed a nationwide surge in the construction of monumentscastles, palaces, mansions, temples, and shrines that was undertaken by a newly consolidated samurai ruling class. And in part it involved an equally widespread surge of urban construction, which dotted the realm with population centers ranging in size from the great cities of Edo, Kyoto, and Osaka, each with dwellings and business establishments for half a million souls, down to a large number of towns containing a few thousand residents apiece . The boom was followed by a "maintenance" phase from about 1660 to the mid-nineteenth century. During this phase society tried by ceaseless repair and replacement to maintain the urban structures produced earlier. Except in the capital city of Edo, whose population kept growing for another century, the maintenance phase added very little that was new and probably failed even to sustain either the quality or the scale of initial construction,'