Community actions against anticommons of forests in contemporary
Japan: Case studies of former common forests
Takuya Takahashia*, Koji Matsushitab and Toshiaki NishimuracaSchool of Environmental Science, The University of Shiga Prefecture, 2500 Hassaka,
Hikone, Shiga, Japan 522-8533; bGraduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University,
Kyoto, Japan; c Nougaku, a consulting firm for rural communities, Koka, Japan* Corresponding author: Takuya Takahashi, taka.takuya@gmail.com or
tak@ses.usp.ac.jp1Community actions against anticommons of forests in contemporary
Japan: Case studies of former commons forests
Over the past few decades, many Japanese forest owners and communities havesuffered from the outcomes of anticommons (parcelization) phenomenon. Since
the Edo Era (17th through 19th centuries), many Japanese commons forests havebeen subdivided and placed under private ownership. Individual owners of thesubdivided small forests (carved out from former commons forests) have lostinterest in forestry, resulting in unclear borders. Many owners have relocatedoutside the villages (absent owners) and/or have passed the land down throughgenerations, resulting in unknown ownership. There are several ways toameliorate the anticommons phenomenon in Japan, as illustrated by theseexamples, which we examined employing case study and comparative study
approaches. 1) Despite the expense, a residents’ association successfully reappropriated co-ownership land by “technically” suing the current respective coowners. 2) Some residents’ associations collectively manage subdivided forests
as one unit to reduce the damage caused by animals such as wild boars or deer.
However, the units are still legally separate and owned by individuals. 3) A landowners’ association stipulated that a vacating resident owner must sell her forest
to the remaining residents. These three cases show how motivations, other thanprofits, could help address the anticommons phenomenon. These motivations
include the intent to keep the community’s holding intact in the event ofconsolidation at the municipality level, to protect the land against pest animals,
and to keep the community’s drinking water pure.
Keywords: anticommons; parcelization; absent owners; residents’ association;
Japan

2

Introduction
Background
Small holding sizes of Japan’s individual forests present huge anticommons (Heller
1998, 2008) challenges for the management and utilization of forests’ ecosystemservices in Japan. In fact, 0.1 to 1 ha holdings constitute 58% in terms of numbers (10%in terms of areas) of all individual forest holdings owned by households in Shiga
Prefecture, Japan, a study site in this paper, as of 1990 (Statistics Bureau 1993) (Figure1). Such holding patterns have their roots in the history of the common forests in Japan.

Figure 1. Individual forest ownership patterns in Shiga Prefecture (Statistics
Bureau, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery 1993)

In Japan, historical division of common forests among commoners started in theearly modern era (the 17th to 19th centuries) of Japan (Takasu 1966; Harada 1969). It is
often said that the infiltration of the market economy into agricultural villages, which
had been based on self-sufficient economies, promoted this process (Harada 1969).
During the 19th and 20th centuries, as the industrialization of Japanese society went on,
the owners of those subdivided forests (parcelization) stopped using forests for
traditional purposes (fodder, fertilizer, and fuel, etc.) because they replaced wood
harvested from their forests with other industrial products such as compound feed,chemical fertilizers, and fossil fuel. Increasing demand for construction wood
encouraged the owners of subdivided forests to plant seedlings of relatively fastgrowing softwood species such as Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) and Japanesecypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa). Especially, the recovery and high economic growththat followed World War II in Japan resulted in high timber prices and encouraged3

active tree planting by individual forest owners while forests in Japan, which had been
over-harvested during the war, could not respond to the demand sufficiently at thisperiod. In turn, the high timber prices motivated policymakers to liberalize wood
imports in this period, and the increasing wood imports resulted in competitive pressure
on the domestic wood market and decreasing profitability of forest management inJapan through the 1980s and 1990s, combined with the appreciation of Japanese yen,
substitution of wood by other materials, and promotion of thinning by governments(Endo 2007, Shimada 2014). Consequently, forest owners have been losing interest inforest management and ownership. In addition, the new civil code of Japan following
World War II orders property owners, in principle, to bequeath forests to their sons anddaughters equally, while the pre-war civil code included the traditional concept offamily assets, which were supposed to be inherited by a series of family chiefs. This
new inheritance practice further encouraged parcelization of individual forests(Kasamatsu and Izumi 1994).
Recent depopulation in Japan had already started in rural areas, especially inmountainous regions of Japan in the 1960s. In many cases, legal owners of forests inrural areas now live in areas far from their forests (absent owners) (Katano 2014). Since
the borders of forests owned by individual owners have often not been clearly recorded
and tampering with neighboring forests without proper permission is illegal, on-site
inspection by related owners is necessary for managing forests (Kajima et al. 2020). In
addition to the low interest of forest owners in their forests and high transaction costs
such as on-site inspection, small sizes of individual forest ownership hinder theutilization of forests. Currently, many forest operators are pursuing low-cost operations,employing machines such as harvesters and processors, which are expensive, while
high-volume operation is needed (Forestry Agency 2019, 1-1-2-(2) Trends of forestry
4

enterprises). Small-size forest ownership makes the establishment of economies of scaledifficult in many cases (Forestry Agency 2020, 1-2-1-(4) Trends of forestry).
Policy responses by the Japanese government include the promotion of theassembly of forest operations by forest operators such as forestry cooperatives orforestry companies (Forestry Agency c.2020). Forest operators assemble individual
forests for the purpose of forest management, while individual ownership forests remain
as they are. However, unclear borders among individual ownership properties or low
interest of owners could again hinder such assembly. Especially, co-ownership withmany co-owners and small individual ownership properties, which were often former
common forests in the Japanese iriai system, present tough challenges to thepolicymakers and forest operators who are promoting and practicing assembly of
individual forests.
In the following paragraphs, we provide a succinct review of literature related toproblems of forest commons in contemporary Japan.
When we focus our attention on research on contemporary or modern forest
commons in Japan, we find a wide-ranged literature. Takahashi et al. (2017; 2019)
investigated the modernization processes and consequences of forest commons.
Shimada (2014) analyzed how external impacts, such as migration and timber import,
affect nowadays’ forest commons. Miyanaga and Shimada (2018), as well as Hirahara(2020) pointed out novel problems concerning the underuse of forest or grasslandcommons in the country. Yamashita et al. (2009) examined the relatively new
institution of the Authorized Neighborhood Association (Authorized Community
Organization) as an institution for managing forest commons and find attractive features
within them.

5The main focus of this study, anticommons issues or parcelization in Japanese
forests, is covered by only a few papers. Katano (2016) investigated types of factors
influencing the behavior of absent owners, who, in many cases, cause obstacles in the
management of subdivided forests. While unrecognized borders within subdivided
forests are also problematic, Kajima et al. (2020) identified the types of private forest
owners unaware of the borders of their own forests.
The above-mentioned brief review indicates that concrete and specificcommunities’ solutions to the tragedy of the anticommons have not been thoroughly
investigated. The current study attempts to fill this research gap.
The objectives of this study are to identify communities’ responses toanticommons or parcelization situations, characterize them, and generate hypotheses for
future studies. We did not test any hypotheses because there were only few examples to
examine. Given the changing or worsening situation regarding the anticommons issues,
the necessity of early recognition of notable examples, and the venue of this article as ashort communication, we regard these objectives justifiable. Glaser and Strauss (c.1967)
argued that generation of theory can be a legitimate research objective, and theconstantly changing social conditions require research conducted on new social
structures. As these new structures appear and disappear constantly, they are notcompatible with examining a large sample. We consider that the benefits of reporting
early examples of community responses outweigh the benefits of waiting for otherexamples, which may not occur unless other communities learn from reports on thoseearly examples.
Structure of this paper
In this study, we interpret these challenges as anticommons problems (Heller 1998;2008) and describe three cases in which communities have resolved these problems
6themselves in a bottom-up manner (Figure 2) while we here do not deal with policydriven official assembly by forest operators mentioned in the above. The second“Materials and Method” section presents the research methods we employed. The third“Results” section describes three cases in detail. The fourth “Discussion” discusses
about the findings from the cases and speculating about future development in this lineof research.

Figure 2. Conceptual framework of this study

Materials and methods
We selected three cases in which communities resolved anticommons situations
themselves, in Shiga Prefecture, Japan. Shiga Prefecture is one of 47 prefectures in Japanand has about 1% of the total area and population of Japan. Close to large cities such as
Kyoto, Osaka, and Kobe, Shiga Prefecture has a significant manufacturing sector but
maintains traditional agricultural landscapes (Figure 3). Shiga Prefecture includes thelargest lake in Japan, Lake Biwa, and the prefectural government places much emphasison environmental protection. Shiga is one of the areas where historical subdivision iswell-advanced (Harada, 1969), given the fact that the Kyoto, Osaka, and Shiga regions
are considered to have been economically advanced in the early modern era of Japan,
from the 17th through 19th century. We selected our samples theoretically (Glaser andStrauss, c. 1967), in the sense that we chose them so that we could identify notable
examples from a region where anticommons situations are prevalent. We consulted
experts on forest management issues regarding notable examples of local communities
tackling anticommons or parcelization situations. Consequently, we identified three suchcases. From 2015 through 2019, we collected documents/statistical data and interviewed
7the main players in the communities with respect to the initiatives. Data sources arepresented in the Appendix. After collecting information related to the three cases, we
conducted a comparative study (Glaser and Strauss, c.1967). Specifically, we repetitively
compared the cases, identifying features and characterizing them. As a result, we
identified eight features that are considered to contribute to communities’ responses toanticommons problems, and several common findings among the three cases. The
findings based on these features could represent hypotheses for future studies.

Figure 3. Map of Shiga Prefecture
Results
Formal transformation of co-ownership into community ownership (Village A)
First, we present an overview of Village A (Matsushita and Takahashi 2017). This
village is a mountain village with an aging population. In the early modern era of Japan,
from the 17th to 19th centuries, the village was a post town in a mountainous areaconnecting areas on the Sea of Japan and the Kyoto-Osaka area. Currently, thepopulation numbers 32, and 19 (59%) of the residents were 75 years or older in 2015
(Statistics Bureau 2017). The size of the village is about 800 ha based on the property
tax ledger. 1 and most of the area (96%) is covered by forests. Eighty-eight percent of
the forests are hardwood forests, which previously produced fuel wood and charcoal
raw material. Besides, the prefectural forestry corporation planted softwood trees on
100 ha of the village land under a share-cropping scheme. The corporation returned the1

Actual figures for the area could be several times greater than those based on the property tax
ledger. This type of discrepancy occurs often with forest lands in Japan.

8

plantation forests to the village because the scheme was not as profitable as originally
expected. Sixty-nine percent of forests in the village are owned by the residents’association, 26 % by individuals, and the remaining 5% by other entities.
Formal transformation of co-ownership into community ownership occurred asfollows. Diverse titles such as former municipalities and co-ownership were found
before the title changes. About 400 ha of forests were registered under the title of theresidents’ association. The remaining forests were registered under the titles of coownership such as “Mr. Tanaka and 10 other people.” Titles for about 90 such forest
stands were identified. The number of “other people” ranged from 10 to 20. Almost
1,000 people who had inherited land claims were found all over Japan. The residents’association sued the 1,000 people so that the village could legally ascertain its rights to
those lands from 2004 through 2015. The residents’ association sent a letter explaining
its intentions, i.e., rectifying legal confusion, to the defendants. A majority of those sued
(defendants) accepted the association’s claim. Many of the defendants did not evenknow about the land. The titles of obtained forest lands were assigned, first, to thepresident of the residents’ association, and, later, to the residents’ association, an
authorized community organization (authorized neighbourhood association; Ninka chiendantai), a new scheme introduced by the revision of Local Autonomy Law in 1991
enabling such organizations to own assets. In planning and implementing these actions,the leadership of a council member of a municipality, which was amalgamated into thecurrent new municipality, as well as the expertise of an official of the prefectural
government, was indispensable. Fund earned as fees from a resort company renting thecommons land of Village A also contributed to this initiative.
The community currently has the following ideas regarding future forest
management. With respect to hardwood forests, a majority of the village forests, no9

specific plan is being considered. With respect to softwood plantation forests (100 ha),thinning every 10 years by forest cooperative workers is being considered, meaning athinning of 10 ha each year. The village is also pursuing a new use of its forests. The
Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN) began experimentally shifting
cultivation in the village’s forests, collaborating with the residents’ association. On thisexperimental forest land, turnips are grown and harvested each year. Even thoughVillage A has made a progress in establishing community ownership again, it still has
further challenges: Aging and a decreasing population threatens community
sustainability.
We summarize the findings from this case as follows:•

It is possible to transform co-ownership titles with many potential claimants tothe title of the residents’ association through court action.

•

A large part of the potential claimants who inherited rights accepted the opinionof the residents’ association.

•

The scheme of authorized community organizations (authorized neighbourhood
associations; Ninka chien dantai), a new scheme enabling such organizations to
own assets, may have encouraged this initiative.

Informal reintegration for the purpose of reducing damage by wild animals(Village B)
Village B is an agricultural village located on the border between agricultural crop
lands, mainly rice paddy fields, and forested hills. Its population is 97, and 14 residents(14% of the population) were 75 years or older in 2015 (Statistics Bureau 2017). The
area of the village is 76 ha, and forests cover 52 ha. The ownership consists of10

individuals’ 16 ha, shrine/temples’ 3 ha, community district’s 20 ha, and coownership’s 13 ha. The plantation covers 4 ha (mostly Japanese cypress), and naturalforests cover the remaining 47 ha (pine (Pinus densiflora), 32 ha; hardwood, 15 ha).
The remaining 1 ha is an unforested area and bamboo forests.
The informal reintegration of the forests went as follows. The main purpose offorest management is to discourage wild animals such as deer and wild boars fromcoming out of the forests by practicing active thinning and setting up buffer zones
between croplands/residential areas and forests. Thinning of trees of certain sizes
requires professional skills and equipment; individual owners must subcontract forest
operators to conduct thinning. Since timber revenue itself cannot cover the necessary
costs for subcontracting, if a forest owner wishes to receive a forestry subsidy, he/she
must prepare a forest management plan with a certain size of forest since 2012.
Therefore, members of village B jointly prepared an integrated management plan for
individual forests, as well as shrine/temple, community district, and co-ownershipforests in 2012. The Land Improvement District organization 2 employed their expertisein the management of agricultural land to prepare the forest management plan. In
particular, an officer of the Land Improvement District led the whole process in thevillage where he lives in the early stages of this initiative. Subsidies from the national,
prefectural and municipal governments, along with timber revenues, covered the cost ofthinning. Individual owners agreed that the residents’ association would receive a2

A Land Improvement District is “an agricultural water use organization which has thequalification of a juridical person and implements land improvement projects, operation andmaintenance of land improvement facilities and control of irrigation and drainage incompliance with the Land Improvement Law” (Nagata 1985).

11

possible profit without resolving the border issues. The village had to resolve borderissues only with other villages, not among village members. This is the key to resolving
the anticommons situation in this case. A forestry cooperative implemented thinning asa subcontractor.
After the introduction of this initiative, significant thinning activities took place.
In 2012, 6 ha of forests in village B and neighboring villages were thinned. Similar
programs were implemented in 70 ha of forests in eight blocks, including 11 villages inthe same city from 2012 through 2014. For the purpose of avoiding outsider ownership,buy-back of forests sold to people living in remote areas took place several times.
The forestry cooperative planned to spread the practices in Village B among thecommunities in the same municipality; however, such diffusion is difficult since theowners of plantations producing higher-value timber are reluctant to such practices.
Those owners do not approve of their forests being intermingled with others, in terms ofaccounting of forest management.
Two findings from this case are identified as follows.
•

The specific purpose of reducing the damage done by wild animals toagriculture induced the reintegration of private forest management.

•

Expertise and experience in the management of agricultural lands helped toinduce the reintegration.

Informal reintegration for the purpose of community water source protection(Village C)
Village C is a suburban community close to both a city center and a mountainous area.
In the early modern era of Japan, the village was located on one of the five major routes
of Japan and had had vibrant commercial activities. The village’s population is 179, and12

18 residents who are 75 years or older constituted 10% of the total population in 2015
(Statistics Bureau 2017). The village’s drinking water is provided by its small-scale
drinking water supply system. The water supply system draws water from a well, into
which rainwater flows through the village’s watershed forests. The total area of thevillage is 129 ha, while its watershed forests cover 71 ha. Most of the forests areindividually owned forests. Plantation forests cover 14 ha, and natural forests cover 51
ha, while the remaining 5 ha are unforested or covered by bamboo as of March, 2004
according to the forest registry record. Japanese cedar forests constitute 9 ha; Japanesecypress, 2 ha; pine, 38 ha; Kunugi oak, 5 ha; and others, 14 ha.
Some years after World War II, fuel wood was not in use anymore. A few
owners sold their forests to outsiders. Responding to the situation, the Common Land
Association, a voluntary organization of former commoners, was established around1970 by more than 30 members, and the members agreed to refrain from abandoning
their forests. The Association planted trees such as Japanese cypress and cedar andbought back forests sold to outsiders. Committee members manage the forests near thecommunity’s water source (less than 10 ha), regardless of who owns them, without
getting permissions of the owners for specific operations. A charcoal kiln was built, andcharcoal has been produced utilizing waste wood harvested during forest management.
Waste wood from forest management is also used for bonfire fuel for the village’s
shrine, which is supported by the parishioners’ association. A soy sauce company ownerhas been an active participant in this initiative. The soy sauce company emphasizes theimportance of clean water for manufacturing soy sauce. Donations from Association
members and voluntary labor contributions from them have supported this initiative.
Advice from lawyers in the city and from the metropolitan area was employedthroughout these processes.
13

We summarize two findings from this case.
•

The specific purpose of water source protection promoted the informal, ad-hoc
reintegration of water source forests.

•

A local business that relied on the water source led the active forest
management.

Discussion
We compare the above-described three cases in Table 1. We examine the three cases
according to eight criteria, i.e., issue, response, new use, finance, labor, driving force,leadership and legal rights, which criteria were generated through continuouscomparisons among the cases.

Table 1. Comparison of three cases

Although we identify few similarities among them on the surface, we can draw
five lessons from the three cases. These could become working hypotheses for future
study.
•

Under certain favorable conditions, communities can resolve anticommons
situations and manage or utilize their resources.

•

Initial motivations were benefits other than timber production. These
motivations include maintaining a community with decreasing population,
protecting against wild animals, and protecting a water source. Focusing on
multi-functionality of forests may be a key to resolving anticommons situations.

14At the same time, the reintegration of timber production, which would reducethe costs of forest management, is occurring.
•

Financing from outside institutions and legal assistance are critical. Profits fromtimber production alone cannot make these initiatives happen.

•

Leadership is important in all three cases. One of the most difficult issues inresolving anticommons situations is bringing back the ownership of absent
owners to insider owners or the community. In particular, negotiations with
absent owners require skills, which the leaders in these cases have learned fromtheir experiences outside the village.

•

Keeping insider ownership appears to be important. In the second and thirdcases, buying back the ownership of absent owners was possible because thenumber of absent owners was relatively small. If the number of absent owners
had been large, the initiatives mentioned here would have been impossible.
These findings are novel in the sense that these bottom-up style responses

towards anticommons situations by communities have not been well recognized in theliterature of forest policy. For example, Yoshino (2013) reviewed the past literature on
the promotion of the assembly of forest operations. In all of them, forest owners wereregarded as the target of promotion by forest operators such as forestry cooperatives orforestry companies, not as a driving force.
Lastly, we would like to speculate on the further development of this line ofresearch. Heller (2008) provided a “medical model in structuring solutions (p.191)” foranticommons that consists of prevention, treatment, and alternative medicine.
Alternative medicines include “Gossip, Shame, and Reputation,” “Voluntary
Agreement,” and “Philanthropy.” The solutions presented in this study appear to have15

certain similarities to those “alternative medicines” in the sense that solutions in thisstudy were also created and tested on the ground and with a bottom-up style. Whatstrengths and weaknesses these “alternative medicines” offer compared to more formal
treatments often provided by official institutions is an interesting question. In fact,
Progressive Property Theorists, a group of legal scholars, pay attention to creative
functions of bottom-up style law-making (Peñalver and Katyal 007). In a similar vein,
from former common forests in Japan, we may be able to learn novel and innovative
solutions to the tragedy of anticommons.

Acknowledgement
We deeply appreciate the cooperation of residents and professionals in research sites.
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 15H02871 and 20H03090.

Acknowledgement
The authors declare no conflicts of interest associated with this manuscript.
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19Figure 1. Individual forest ownership patterns in Shiga Prefecture (Statistics Bureau, theMinistry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery 1993)

20

Figure 2. Conceptual framework of this study

21

Figure 3. Map of Shiga Prefecture

National census borders (similar to community district borders), Lake Biwa (darkportion in the center of the prefecture) and forests (shaded area)

Source:https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=bf1517e6867c416d817a46d0b444dc5f#vis
ualizeThe map of the whole Japan cites the digital map (land basic information) published by
the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI) and ESRI Japan’s data on themunicipality borders of the whole country. The data of national census borders from
National Census Bureau.

22

Table 1. Comparison of three cases
VillageA

B

C

Population

32

97

179

Forest area

800 ha (property tax ledger data)

52 ha

71 ha

Issue

Decreasing population

Wild animals

Protection of water source

Response

Reintegration of titles

Subsidized program under a unified plan

Voluntary management of individual
forests

New use

Shifting cultivation

Buffer against animal invasion, “sheep”
gardenCharcoal production; bonfire

Finance

Rent revenue

Subsidies; timber sales

Donation from residents; subsidies

Labor

Subcontracting to a forestry
cooperative

Subcontracting to a forestry cooperative

Own labor

Driving forces

Residents’ association

Residents’ association; Land
improvement district

Common Land Association; Shrine
parishioners’ association

Leadership

Former council member

Officer of the land improvement district

Local businessperson

Legal rights

Transformation from co-ownershipto community ownership

Buyback of sold forests; demarcating
outside borders

Buyback of sold forests

23

1
Appendix
Data sources of case studies
Village Informants (date of interviews or fieldwork) or data sourcesA

Former council member (2015-12-28)
Letter to absent owners
Forest registry record of Shiga Prefecture in 2020
Encyclopedia of Products of Shiga Prefecture (data as of 1878)
Fieldwork of experimental shifting cultivation activities (2017)

B

Officer of Land Improvement District (2019-5-31)
Officer of the Forestry Cooperative that manages the forests (2016-1-13)
Forest registry record of Shiga Prefecture in c.2015
Map of forests created by the community
Encyclopedia of Products of Shiga Prefecture (data as of 1878)
Fieldwork of forests managed (2016, 2019)

C

Officers of Common Land Association, residents’ association, and Shrine
parishioners’ association (2018-10-31; 2019-4-11; 2019-5-24)
Forest registry record of Shiga Prefecture in c.2008
Statute of Common Land Association since 1981
Maps of the community (unofficial one created in c. 19th century and official
ones in the 20the century)
Encyclopedia of Products of Shiga Prefecture (data as of 1878)
Fieldwork of forests where management activities are conducted (2019)
Fieldwork of a festival of the shrine (2019)
Official History of the City including village C (2001-2003)

24