A 68-year-old oyster farmer working in the sea off Kesennuma, a coastal city in Miyagi Prefecture devastated by the March 11 tsunami last year, has been chosen by the United Nations as one of the winners of the Forest Heroes Awards. The U.N. Forum on Forests newly established the awards to celebrate individuals who dedicate their lives to nurturing forests.
A 68-year-old oyster farmer working in the sea off Kesennuma, a coastal city in Miyagi Prefecture devastated by the March 11 tsunami last year, has been chosen by the United Nations as one of the winners of the Forest Heroes Awards. The U.N. Forum on Forests newly established the awards to celebrate individuals who dedicate their lives to nurturing forests.
For a quarter century, Shigeatsu Hatakeyama, who believes forests play a crucial role in preserving the ocean environment and biodiversity, has planted trees in mountains along a river flowing into the cove where he cultivates oysters. His efforts to clean the water and conserve ocean resources have been recognized as worthy of being praised as heroic. But the bountiful sea that offers so much to people has claimed many invaluable lives. The Asahi Shimbun recently talked with Hatakeyama to find out his thoughts about what happened on that day and its consequences.
Excerpts of the interview follow.
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Woodland near villages in Japan were mostly covered by deciduous trees. After the end of World War II, however, deciduous trees, which are less valuable because they are harder to use as construction materials, were cut down to make room for planting Japanese cedars.
Since Japanese cedars were planted close to each other, the cedar forests needed thinning. But when the time for thinning came, these cedars were unsellable because of the yen’s appreciation and trade liberalization (which caused sharp increases in imports of cheap foreign lumber). As a result, many mountains have been left untended.
Since trees prevent sunlight from reaching the ground in such dense forests, there are usually no weeds covering the floor. Soil in such a forest is dry and runs out easily when it rains heavily. As I had learned these problems, I set out to recreate forests of deciduous trees. As many people have joined our afforestation efforts year after year, we can now harvest high-quality oysters and scallops in the sea.
Before last year’s disaster, oyster farmers from France came and saw the Kensennuma Bay and praised it as “a heavenly sea.” For us, however, this is a sea where there is both “heaven and hell” existing together. As long as we live here, we must accept the “hell” called tsunami.
We cultivate oysters and scallops on moored rafts, which are tied with ropes to concrete blocks placed on the sea floor. These rafts are washed away helplessly when a big tsunami occurs. Aquaculture businesses in the Sanriku region are destined to be destroyed once in a while.
When I recently visited New York for the ceremony to receive the Forest Heroes Award, I ate oysters at an oyster bar. I hate to say this, but, honestly speaking, I found the oysters unsavory. They were completely different from the oysters harvested in Kesennuma. Well, we eat oysters just after they are harvested in the nearby sea. So it is not surprising that they are totally different (from oysters offered in a New York restaurant).
Mountainous areas in Japan all face similar problems. If our reconstruction plan proves to be successful, it can be used to revitalize similar communities all over Japan. The money needed to use forests according to this blueprint would be a pittance compared with the budget for building all these concrete facilities in the sea.
On the other hand, a high embankment poses a big obstacle to fishing and spoils the scenery. If the sea is separated from the nearby mountains and wetlands by huge floodgates and embankments, the rich marine resources could be lost.
To us, it seems far more important to think about how to get along well with the sea and the mountains than consider how to deal with the threat of tsunami.
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Shigeatsu Hatakeyama was born in 1943 and is chief of a nonprofit organization called Mori wa Umi no Koibito (The forests are lovers of the sea). In February, Hatakeyama was chosen by the United Nations Forum on Forests, which is dedicated to the cause of forest protection, as one of the inaugural winners of the body’s Forest Heroes Awards.