Suchergebnisse

Timber plantations make up nearly half the Japanese forest area. However, in recent decades domestic timber has been displaced by imports. The decline of Japanese forestry forms the background to the emergence of forest tourism whereby domestic forests become important sites for the recreational leisure of Japan's urban middle class. This article describes the ways in which the Japanese forest is exploited as a tourist resource, and examines the problems that arise in this process of recommoditizing a timber forest into a tourist forest.

The nature & outcomes of initiatives to establish civil society in postwar Japan are discussed in reference to an upland town-making project in Motomiya. Although traditional definitions of civil society rely on a strict division between a national state & society, in Japan, state & society are not entirely distinct entitites, & their relationship is often characterized by overlap & intermingling. Neither national states nor national societies are single, undifferentiated entities; both are characterized by plurality. Local differentiation in both government & society further complicates the simplistic national state-society dichotomy. The town-building project in Motomiya attempted to replace the rural villages (deemed by the state as incompatible with modern Japan) with larger, more civic-minded towns. Although the younger generation favored ths modernization effort, the older generation was reluctant to change. It is concluded that village parochialism hinders civic society at the national level by undermining efforts at national identity, & at the local level, by impeding public communication between the village & state. 34 References. T. Sevier