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Spurred on by such innovations, Sumitomo acquired mining rights to a large number of additional lots, multiplying the land area it had mining rights to by over 40 times in just 20 years. Such expansion, however, entailed a price—before long almost all of the trees in the vicinity of the mines had been cut down. Trees were required to reinforce mine shafts to protect miners, and no matter how many were cut, there were never enough. And the need for large quantities of charcoal and firewood exacerbated the wood shortage. To make matters worse, smelter smoke damaged both crops and trees.
Seeing the impact the mines were having on their surroundings, Teigo Iba (1847–1926), who became general manager of Besshi in 1894, initiated a massive tree-planting program. Sumitomo had planted no more than 50,000 trees in the five years prior to Iba’s appointment. In contrast, in Iba’s first year alone, the company planted no fewer than 110,000. In 1897, it planted 1.2 million, the first time the company had ever planted over a million trees in a single year. In the first decade of the 20th century—the peak of this effort—the company planted 21 million trees and started 11.9 million seedlings—an average of 5,700 tree plantings and 3,260 seedling starts a day. Considering that the people of the time had not yet so much as imagined the mechanization of tree planting and that workers were planting Japanese cypress and cedar seedlings with care so that the trees could take root and flourish—and were doing so on steep, uneven ground—those are astonishing numbers.
Late in life, Iba—looking out over the vast stretches of forest that his project had brought back to Besshi—said, “If you want to know what my real work has been, this is it.” His words tell us of the conviction with which he undertook this task. |
