Ask anyone, of most any age and in most any society, how we get wood, and you’ll hear one answer: by cutting down trees. It’s therefore natural that any method of lumber production that leaves trees standing will get a lot of attention. Such has been the case with daisugi, the 600-year-old Japanese technique we’ve previously featured here on Open Culture. The Leaf of Life video above explains just what it involves: “Specially planted cedar trees are pruned heavily. Think of it as a giant bonsai.” While these operations take place biennially, “harvesting takes 20 years, and old tree stock grows up to 100 shoots at a time,” producing a stronger and more flexible wood to boot.
Such an unusual method of cultivation, you may imagine, must have arisen in unusual circumstances. As the video explains, daisugi was originally invented in the western Japanese region of Kitayama, well south of the Osaka-Kyoto-Nara conurbation.
Working under a shortage of seedlings and flat terrain, the arborists of Kitayama developed this method of foresting that made it possible to “reduce the number of plantations, make the harvest cycle faster, and produce denser wood as well.” More than a little of the demand for it owed to the fourteenth-century elite vogue for sukiya-zukuri, an elegant form of residential architecture much expanded from the traditional Japanese tea house.
For a more nuts-and-bolts — or rather, trunks-and-branches — explanation of how daisugi is done, have a look at the video just above from Roji Gardening. You first need a sugi tree, also known as a Cryptomeria japonica or Japanese redwood, whose fast growth makes it all work. When it reaches six or seven meters, which takes about as many years, “you do something Western gardeners would never dream of”: cut the trunk at the height of half a meter, prune back the remaining branches, and cultivate the buds that appear on the remaining “platform seeder.” Continue regularly pruning the series of “perfectly vertical” new trunks into which they grow, eventually removing everything but the top 30 centimeters on each. Within a decade, you’ll end up with a good source of wood, if you need it, but also an “ever-changing, interesting statement tree” — that, as a bonus, will also look like something out of a Ghibli movie.
Related Content:
The Art of Creating a Bonsai: One Year Condensed Condensed Into 22 Mesmerizing Minutes
The Biology of Bonsai Trees: The Science Behind the Traditional Japanese Art Form
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
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