How Japan Invented Daisugi, the Ancient Method of Growing Lumber Without Cutting Down Trees

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.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Daisu­gi, the 600-Year-Old Japan­ese Tech­nique of Grow­ing Trees Out of Oth­er Trees, Cre­at­ing Per­fect­ly Straight Lum­ber

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

What Makes the Art of Bon­sai So Expen­sive?: $1 Mil­lion for a Bon­sai Tree, and $32,000 for Bon­sai Scis­sors

A Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion Com­pares the Size of Trees: From the 3‑Inch Bon­sai, to the 300-Foot Sequoia

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

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.