Hinoki (Japanese cypress) Lives Twice:
The World of Tsunekazu Nishioka, a Temple Carpenter

TANAKA Masakazu
Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University, Japan

Introduction

One cannot truly apprehend how the Japanese traditionally relate to the environment, without understanding the role of wood in Japanese culture. Jiro Kohara, for example, compares the Japanese and European cultures as below.

"Japanese and European houses differ most in the way their indoor and outdoor spaces meet. Our [Japanese] houses have developed based on the sense of life that everything, including plants, animals, and even human beings, is ephemeral, that a single nature has manifested itself in these ephemeral shapes, and that this world, as a single nature, is our 'life-long dwelling.' So the basic idea [of the Japanese people] when building a house is to build it in such a way that it is inconspicuous in the surrounding environment, by simply erecting thin wooden posts, putting shoji or paper screens between neighboring posts, and laying down a veranda around the house. Open the screens, and you will find the surrounding environment, erasing the boundary between the green outside and the indoor space. You borrow landscape instead of making a garden; you accept insects or birds as they come into the house. All these ideas are based on the philosophy that mountains, forests, and even the moon are part of the unified whole. On the other hand, according to European ideas, human beings stand opposed to nature, and therefore the development of art and culture presupposes the conquest of nature. People's dwellings are protected by thick stone or brick walls, with heavy doors that block even air; the interior and the exterior are clearly divided; and cities are bordered with robust walls. A characteristic of Japanese interior space is that it uses living materials(1) in columns, shoji screens, tatami mats, and the ceiling, and that its governing tone is the texture of unvarnished wood. It is believed that human beings feel most natural and soothing to be surrounded by living materials, because they are also living creatures. An interior space made of living materials is a space that combines nature and artifacts. In Japanese interior design, the unvarnished surfaces of hinoki (Japanese cypress) and sugi (Japanese cedar), frequently used finishings, mean the same thing as the green outside." (Kohara, pp. 21-22)

Kohara goes on to say that the Western culture is a culture of stone or metal, whereas the Japanese culture is a culture of wood. As is evident in the above quotation, this contrast between Japanese and Western houses has often been understood as the contrast in peoples' senses of nature. According to that idea, stone culture tends to draw a clear line between exterior and interior while wood culture doesn't, shunning division between the two; subsequently Japanese interior space is more strongly related to the surrounding environment. Western societies view nature as opposed to human kind or civilization, while the Japanese regard it as compassionate and maternal. Western people value everlasting artificial products, whereas the Japanese find the truth in the fact that things change, and lead a life harmonized with change.
Although Kohara refers to the Buddhist view of life being something transient and empty, as one source of the Japanese sense of nature, it is more reasonable to trace this view back to Japanese animism, which sees godly existence in every natural object.
This doesn't mean that Japan has never destroyed its natural environment. There is still a wide gap between the Japanese thought and the reality, which remains to be explained. For example, a Norwegian anthropologist, Kalland, denies outright the assumption that the Japanese are a nature-loving people. He says that what the Japanese love is highly abstracted nature, not "real" nature. He says that the Japanese regard real nature as something to conquer, just as Westerners do, and argues that it is unreasonable to leap think that the Japanese love of nature is conducive to environmental protection (Kalland 1995).
One must also be aware that the Japanese can often fall into an outdated nationalism when contrasting Japanese (or Asian) and Western thoughts about nature. It is true that Western nations have played a major role in the advancement of science and technology, which has sometimes resulted in destruction of the natural environment and depletion of natural resources. But this is no reason to advocate non-Western, non-Christian values. It is dangerous to view the religious discourse of the people of a specific region and time in today's context, and to think that the discourse determined their attitude toward the natural environment as modern people expect (Pedersen 1995). In this paper, to avoid the pitfall of addressing religions and environmental issues, I will explore the Japanese sense of nature and its potential problems, through more specific examples.
The examples I will use are some statements by the master carpenter of Horyuji Temple, Tsunekazu Nishioka, who, in a sense, embodies Japanese wood culture. Shigeru Aoyama explains the relation between Nishioka and wood culture at the beginning of a recorded conversation with Nishioka.

"Carpenters handle, cut, and assemble wood. This means that they are the vanguards of Japan 's wood culture, the essence or the core of the Japanese culture. Buddhist architecture, of course, is the most traditional area in Japanese carpentry. Out of the Nishioka family came the last three master carpenters for major temples; Tsunekazu Nishioka devoted half of his life to temple carpentry. I believe the source of the influences that shaped Japanese culture can be identified through understanding how wood is regarded in that culture, by listening to Tsunekazu Nishioka." (Nishioka and Aoyama, pp. 14-15)

The purpose of this paper is to explore the Japanese sense of the natural environment, by examining the thoughts of a miyadaiku (a carpenter qualified to work for shrines and temples), who is an expert on wood, which is at the core of Japanese culture.
Before discussing Nishioka's statements, I would like to explain why I took up the profession of carpentry.
Japan's wood (and often paper) culture has been regarded as a serious cause of deforestation. One frequent criticism concerns the disposable wooden chopsticks used in restaurants. The use of such chopsticks is condemned as wasting forest resources. Some argue that one should carry one's own chopsticks instead. The amount of lumber consumed in disposable chopsticks every year in Japan is estimated to be equal to the wood in ten thousand two-story houses (Kohara, p. 185).
What is notable is that, in this criticism of disposable chopsticks, forest destruction issues are discussed from the "consumption" point of view. How is forest destruction discussed from the "production" point of view? Isn't it necessary to discuss the meaning of wood to those who actually deal with wood, rather than that to those who merely use, and dispose of, wood?
Although production (or processing) can be regarded as part of a long consumption process, in current environmental discussions, the term "consumption" has the limited meaning of "mass consumption" (and the "mass production" that supports it), and their minimization is deemed the solution to environment problems. This way of thinking looks only at the quantitative aspect of environmental issues, and ignores the thoughts of people directly involved in production. This is because their thoughts are irrelevant to those who only discuss the mass consumption and production of wood. The idea of the minimum production and consumption of wood, for the sustenance of people directly involved in production, has also been approved only in the quantity-based discussion of environmental issues.
Many people lament and criticize deforestation by nomads or slash-and-burn farmers without hearing the opinions of these people. This problem can be avoided by focusing on the production site, and discussing the aspects of environmental issues other than the quantitative ones. After all, those hit hardest by deforestation and resource depletion are those involved in the production activities that cause these problems; therefore, it is necessary to listen to these people, instead of sticking to slogans such as "Preserve the forest," or "Stop overusing resources." Accordingly, I propose to explore what Tsunekazu Nishioka, a master carpenter in traditional Japanese architecture, thought about wood, and see if his thought contains any suggestions for the discussion of environmental issues and sustainable development.

Three Generations of Horyuji Temple Master Carpenters(2)

Tsunekazu Nishioka has succeeded his father and grandfather as a Horyuji Temple carpenter. The following is a short history of his family.
Nishioka's grandfather, Tsunekichi, was born in 1857. He became the defacto Master Carpenter (supervisor and chief carpenter) for Horyuji Temple when commissioned to repair the portable holy sculpture repository in the West Garden Precinct of Horyuji Temple at the age of thirty two, in 1884. He was succeeded by Narumitsu, who married to his second daughter into the Nishioka family in 1884. Tsunekichi retired in 1929 and died at the age of eighty one in 1933.
Narumitsu Nishioka was born in 1884, and married into the family at the age of twenty four. In 1919, he became the Master Carpenter, and supervised the repair of the eastern corridor and the belfry in the Western Precinct. He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1955, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette, in 1945 from the Japanese government. He died in 1975.
Tsunekazu Nishioka, born in 1908 and the first son of Narumitsu, was taught carpentry by his grandfather. After graduating from elementary school, he entered an agricultural school at the age of thirteen, where he studied soil, fertilizers, forestry, etc. In 1934, he was married and became the temple's Master Carpenter, supervising the Eastern Precinct service hall renovation, which began in that year (this was the beginning of a long and famous series of renovations at Horyuji Temple). During World War II, he was stationed in China as a Yangtze River coastal guard 1938-39, which gave him exposure to Chinese architecture. After returning home, he supervised the repair and reconstruction of important Buddhist buildings in Japan, including the main hall of Horyuji Temple (1949), the three-storied pagoda of Horinji Temple (1967), and the main hall (1975) and Western Pagoda of Yakushiji Temple (1977). He received the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 1975, the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette, and the Architectural Institute of Japan Award in 1981, and the Cultural Merit Award in 1992. He died at the age of eighty six in 1995.
What is interesting about Nishioka's education is that he went to an agricultural school, not a technical school, which most would-be carpenters attended. In an interview, he said there was a conflict of opinion between his grandfather and father regarding which school he should attend: "I had to listen to my father and grandfather arguing every evening. My scores had plummeted by the third [last] term in the sixth grade. I didn't want to study by then. Eventually, my grandfather won, and I was put into an agricultural school." (Nishioka and Aoyama, p. 24)
Nishioka's grandfather believed one can mature as a person only after knowing soil, because everything comes out of soil. His grandfather tried to teach him to appreciate the "life" of things when making them. According to Nishioka, his grandfather once said that one can know wood only after knowing soil, and that education at a technical school gives one the mind-set of a "salaried worker" who disdains labor:

"My father would say that I needed technical knowledge to be a carpenter, and then my grandfather would say, 'No, no. I'm going to make him the master carpenter for Horyuji Temple, not a regular carpenter. The master carpenter needs to know the nature of soil and wood, and for that purpose, he needs to go to an agricultural school.'" (Nishioka and Aoyama, pp. 26-27)

As I will point out later, Nishioka compared the lifestyle or mind-set of modern people referred to by his grandfather as "salaried workers" with that of those who appreciate soil and wood; and thoroughly criticized the former.

Hinoki or the King of Woods

For Nishioka, the essence of Japanese culture is not a specific architecture or life-style, but the people's attitude to wood, and their accumulated knowledge about the nature of wood. He believed Horyuji Temple to be a showcase of these attributes. What astonished him was the knowledge and technology of the people of the Asuka Era (593-710), in which the temple was built, regarding wood, especially hinoki (hinoki, or Japanese cypress, was the wood used in the temple), and not its architectural style.

　　　"When a temple or shrine carpenter says wood, he means hinoki. Because there was hinoki, Japan could develop wooden architecture, and possess the world 's oldest [wooden] structure." (Nishioka, 1993, p. 21)

There is a reference to hinoki already in the first of the thirty volumes of the Nihon Shoki (the oldest official history of Japan, covering the mythical age of the gods up to the reign of the empress Jito (r. 686-697)): "Hinoki should be used to build a shrine."
Nishioka also said, "[People of the Asuka Era] knew that hinoki has nobility, aroma, and long life...Hinoki has a long life, yet is easy to handle. It can be chiseled and planed well...But it isn't just tame, soft, or manageable. When it is new, it is easy to drive a nail into it; yet, you can't pull the nail out when a long time has passed, because the wood shrinks and clamps the nail. After fifty years, you can never pull a nail out. If you try to force it, you will tear off the head of the nail. Hinoki can be so strong." (Nishioka 1993, p. 20)
Hinoki not only has a useful life of longer than a thousand years; it also sharply increases in strength about two hundred years after being cut down, and maintains that strength until another thousand years. This means that, in terms of strength, a hinoki tree doesn't die when it is cut down, but continues to "live" for almost one thousand years more. Therefore, the mission of temple or shrine carpenters, who use almost only hinoki, is to draw the longest second life out of hinoki.

Fig. 1 Strength of Lumber Taken from Old Hinoki Trees(Kohara, p.172)

Although Horyuji Temple is the world's oldest wooden structure, built one thousand and three hundred years ago, and was recently added to the World Cultural and Natural Heritage list, Nishioka said that it was not "old and tattered" at all. He explained as follows;

　　　"If you look at the tips of the eaves of five-storied pagoda [of Horyuji Temple], you realize they are aligned in a straight line pointing to the heaven. No disarray after one thousand and three hundred years... What is more, the wood older than one thousand years is still alive. If you take off the roof tiles and remove the dust underneath, you will notice that the wooden structure rebounds gradually. If you plane the wood surface, you can smell the aroma of hinoki. This is how long hinoki lives.

　　　Because hinoki has such characteristics, it is the responsibility of a carpenter to let it live its full life. You must make sure to let the wood live for at least one thousand years, if that is its life. For that purpose, you need to know wood and how to use it very well.

　　　This doesn't apply only to large temples. It applies also to private homes. Wooden posts used in private houses have a life of about sixty years, so you have to make them last for at least the same length of time. If you tear down houses and throw away all the lumber every twenty years, you will never have enough wood in Japan. It is a natural obligation humankind owes to nature to make wood last for the same length of time as the original tree lives. If we could that, we would never run out of wood resources." (Nishioka 1993, pp. 26-27)

To fulfill the responsibility Nishioka described, one needs to actually see where and how trees have grown. Nishioka often referred to one of the rules handled down over generations of miyadaiku; "Don't buy wood, buy mountain." This rule suggests learning where lumber can be used by learning where the original tree has grown. For example, a tree on the south slope of a mountain should be used on the south side of a building. In other words, carpenters make a new mountain when they build a temple. They give a second life to lumber by knowing its characteristics.

Wood or Iron?

Nishioka harshly criticized the modern way of thinking. According to him, people were deteriorating, losing the heart to appreciate wood, especially after the Muromachi Era (1333 - 1568). That deterioration was clear to him in the recent method of repairing temples.
This training he received in carpentry was strict and demanding, but also very lavish, accommodating individual apprentice's needs. It was different from the uniform education ordinary Japanese children receive today. Despite the current Japanese catchphrase, the "Time of Individuality," today's education does not really consider children's individuality.
This applies to the way people view trees, as well. Afforestation makes uniform trees. Most carpenters cannot tell the difference between trees any more. To improve efficiency, the process of fully utilizing individual trees was fragmented for efficient division of labor. When ordering wood, one indicates dimensions, rather than characteristics. Plywood eliminates whatever individuality wood had. Wood has thus been standardized and made into an industrial product.

"You can draw greater strength and longer life out of wood by knowing its characteristics, but you can finish work much faster by standardizing wood and ignoring the difference. You do not need the ability to differentiate; you don't need to be trained to do that. For that matter, a novice carpenter can do the job." (Nishioka 1993, p. 18)

In today's world, where efficiency is most important, people compete to introduce machines; they do not care about the "individuality of wood." Accordingly, lumber producers want only the wood that can be processed on machines.

"They don't want bent wood; they don't want twisted wood, because they can't process it on machines. So they have less wood they can use. They throw away the wood they can't use because it is "bad" wood they don't need. There simply can't be enough wood this way. " (Nishioka 1993, pp. 18-19)

According to Nishioka, if wood is handled by a good carpenter, it will last for about the same length of time as the tree from which it was taken. If wood is used this way, there will be trees of similar ready age by the time the building is next rebuilt. He argued that traditional carpentry was part of this natural cycle of using and growing wood, but that the division of labor of carpentry fragmented this grand cycle, leading to waste of resources and forest destruction.
For Nishioka, who calculated his materials' life as 1,000 years, iron or concrete couldn't compare with wood, because their relatively strong fire resistance didn't offset the brittleness they acquired after only some hundred years. The debate between Nishioka and Takuichi Takeshima, the former professor of Nagoya Institute of Technology, in a newspaper, was about whether iron should be used in reconstructing the three-storied pagoda of Horinji Temple. Takeshima asserted that iron reinforcement was necessary to compensate for structural defects inherent in traditional architecture, criticizing Nishioka in an article, "Design and Execution of the three-storied pagoda of Horinji Temple" as follows:

"[Nishioka] treated modern architectural considerations as if they were child 's play compared with the mystic art passed down in the miyadaiku family. The design intention was distorted in various places, and the far-reaching plan was ignored. . . He should accept the fact that physical force beyond what material tolerance cannot be dealt with by cheap tricks or nationalistic spiritualism." (Mainichi Newspaper, Evening edition, April 9, 1975)

Nishioka refuted Takeshima as follows in an article "Life of Wood" on April 15.

"If we use only hinoki, it will last one thousand years, but if we pierce it with iron, we will have to replace all the hinoki when the iron becomes brittle from rust after three or four hundred years. That's why we shouldn't use iron." (Mainichi Newspaper, Evening edition, April 15, 1975)(3)

Nishioka thought that iron reinforcement was wrong, that it reflected the modern belief in iron and petroleum, and ignorance of the true nature of wood. He criticized scholars who depended on theoretical calculations without having any hands-on experience in construction work, and without considering how materials change over time.

Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, I would like to summarize Nishioka's thought, and point out its weakness.
Firstly, Nishioka's thought can be summarized as follows: he saw an ideal society in the Asuka Era reflected in the architecture of Horyuji Temple; this ideal society was where people and natural environment prospered in harmony. He then compared that ideal society with the modern one, and criticized the latter for putting efficiency ahead everything else, and for not fostering individuality.
Secondly, Nishioka's thought involves three important points. One is that he focused only on hinoki. He thought that miyadaiku should use hinoki, and that all other woods are inferior as building materials. When studying his thought, one should always remember that he referred only to hinoki by the term "wood."
Another point concerning his thought is that it was based on his version of animism. For example, he talked about the godliness of wood as follows.

"When we [miyadaiku] entered a forest in Taiwan, and saw trees some two thousand or two thousand and five hundred years old, we didn't view them as mere trees; we looked upon them as gods...so, before cutting them down, we held a service, and prayed those trees, some of them two thousand and five hundred years old, to live another two thousand years as a temple...

When I went to Taiwan [to buy raw lumbers, some local people said, without the slightest hesitation, that they produced wood. I said 'That isn't true. You didn't produce the wood. It's nature that grew them for two thousand years. You cut them down out of your greed to make money. That isn't right. We came here to buy lumber, but really, we are receiving them as gods, and we want to make them into a house of god. So please treat them the same way as we do. They are not things. They are alter egos of Great Nature. That means they are gods. Please treat them carefully.'" (Nishioka and Matsuhisa, pp. 77 - 78)

The following statement by Aoyama, in his long recorded conversation with Nishioka, also indicates Nishioka's attitude toward wood, which suggests animism.

"I think Tsunekazu Nishioka is one of the few people who knows the nature of wood, and can identified and, in a sense, talk, with wood. When he stands in a timber forest, trees as old as two thousand years honestly tell him their past, their strengths and weaknesses. It seems as if a tacit promise is made, just at that point, between the master carpenter and the trees, that they will be used as columns or whatever." (Nishioka and Aoyama, p. 197)

As is evident in these quotes, Nishioka's sense of nature is similar to that in animism, especially the animism of Ainu and other hunting peoples in Siberia and Mongolia. Their type of animism differs from that of the farming peoples, which is based on a year-round cultivation cycle; the animism of hunting peoples allows and even justifies some killing. Nishioka's attitude toward wood is similar to that of hunting peoples toward animals (Konagaya 1994).
The third point about his thought is that he does not seem to have recognized the fact of environmental destruction in Taiwan. When Nishioka went to Taiwan, there was no hinoki available for building materials in Japan. Nishioka and his fellow carpenters had to import a large quantity of hinoki from Taiwan. By 1975, however, the Taiwanese government had to establish restrictions on cutting and exporting trees, because deforestation was resulting in foods. Regarding this fact, Nishioka only celebrated the luck of obtaining enough wood for Yakushiji Temple, and didn't take up the issue of environmental destruction. Even if cutting down trees does not terminate the life of wood, because it continues to live as building material, it is a fact that cutting down trees leaves mountains without trees. Yakushiji Temple can be reconstructed, but the forests in Taiwan cannot be reconstructed so fast. The natural life cycle he often referred to has already collapsed. Nishioka seems to have been almost oblivious of these situations. Although Nishioka criticized the history of deforestation and environmental destruction in Japan, based on his experience in China (Nishioka and Aoyama, pp. 49), that criticism never led him to rethink about the way he worked.
Finally, after briefly introducing Nishioka's thought and discussing some points about it for comparison between his thoughts and modern attitudes toward the environment, I would like to point out the significance of Nishioka's thought. I don't have any nationalistic inclination in advocating the solution of environmental problems based on the animism of ancient Japanese, but Nishioka's thought, despite its flaws, is worth comparing with modern environmental thoughts because his represents a sense of nature neglected in modern pragmatism. It is necessary to explore that long-neglected sense of nature, especially in the thoughts and activities of craftsmen, rather than focusing on consumers and farmers.

Notes
(1) Kohara uses the term "living materials" to signify materials such as wood, cotton, and silk, as opposed to "technological materials" made from minerals.
(2) The source of the information below is Nishioka and Aoyama (pp. 267-271), unless otherwise stated.
(3) See Nishioka 1991, pp. 191-202 for details of this debate.

References
Kalland, Arne 1995, 'Culture in Japanese Nature,' Asian Perceptions Nature: A Critical Approach, Edited by Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland, London: Curzon Press.
Konagaya, Yuki 1994, 'Shuryo to Yuboku wo tsunagu Dobutsushigenkan,' Koza Chikyuni ni ikiru 3 Shigen he no Bunka Tekiou: Shizen to no Kyozon no Ecology, Edited by Ryutaro Otsuka, Tokyo: Yuzankaku.
Nishioka, Tsunekazu 1991, Kini Manabe: Horyuji, Yakushiji no Bi (Shogakkan Library), Tokyo: Shogakkan.
Nishioka, Tsunekazu 1993, Ki no Inochi, Ki no Kokoro, Tokyo: Soushisha.
Nishioka, Tsunekazu and Shigeru Aoyama 1977, Ikaruga no Takumi: Miyadaiku Sandai, Tokyo: Tokumashoten.
Nishioka, Tsunekazu and Horin Matsuhisa, 1986, Ki no Kokoro, Hotoke no Kokoro, Tokyo: Shunjusha.
Kahara, Jiro 1984, Nihonjin to Ki no Bunka: Interia no Genryu(Asahi Sensho 262), Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha.
Pedersen, Poul 1995, 'Nature, Religion and Cultural Identity: The Religious Environmentalist Paradigm,' Asian Perceptions Nature: A Critical Approach, Edited by Ole Bruun and Arne Kalland, London: Curzon Press.

Video
Shougakkan and Sancraft 1993, Ki ni Manabe: Miyadaiku Nishioka Tsunekazu　no Waza to Kokoro. Tokyo: Shougakkan