14 - Japanese Swidden Agriculture (yakihata): Environmental History of Grassland, Forest and Fire

Summary

This chapter explores the environmental history of Japanese swidden agriculture or yakihata, which has not received much attention from historians. Yakihata was not a primitive agriculture without change, but a technique that used fire to bring diversity to the ecosystem. One effect was to encourage the development of agroforestry, and from the 18th century onward, swidden agriculture became the foundation of plantation forestry. Ironically, modern forestry policy was insensitive to yakihata and sought to eliminate it to conserve forestry.

Introduction

Yakihata (or, alternatively, yakibata), a Japanese term for swidden agriculture or shifting cultivation, involving the clearing of forested lands in order to use them for agricultural purposes, provides an interesting perspective on the environmental history of Japan. Swidden cultivation works directly on the natural environment since it involves the burning of existing plants for the cultivation of useful crops for humans. Compared to standard agriculture on continuous farmland, yakihata cultivation seems to be relatively wild and destructive. Conversely, it seems to represent a very wise relationship between people and the environment, using fire to skillfully alter and exploit the natural environment. According to Stephen Pyne, an advocate of an environmental history of fire, shifting cultivation is a prime example of how humans create ecological conditions to their advantage through man-made burning. Yakihata agriculture can be a touchstone for considering the relationship between humans and the environment; it has been evaluated both positively and negatively in the past. This chapter provides a basic overview of the environmental history of swidden agriculture in Japan as well as some interesting research points, with reference to the author's research.

Many historians have understood swidden farming in Japan not as a mainstream agricultural practice but a marginal one, while historical geographers have largely compensated for the lack of research on yakihata. Some historians have recently begun to reconsider the swidden fields. These geographical and historical studies have been inspired by the ethnographical interest in shifting cultivation, which became dominant during the second half of the 20th century. Sasaki Kōmei (1929–2013), a key scholar in rediscovering swidden agriculture, attempted to understand yakihata as the basis of Japanese culture with an origin in the mountainous area of Southeast Asia.