Japanese city saws off the tops of trees because leaves are a “garbage problem”
An article at Japan Focus describes how the city of Kawagoe effectively destroyed the beautiful scenery of its “Zelkova Avenue”:
Riding my bicycle on Zelkova Avenue one morning in late September, I noticed several trucks parked along one side of the street as I approached Tsurugashima station. Two trucks with hydraulic lifts raised workers high up into the trees where they were sawing off branches. First, it was on just one short stretch near the station. In the following days, however, the crew moved up the street. They were not just pruning. They were cutting vertical trunks of the trees, six inches or so in diameter. Entire tops of the trees were being sawed off.
[....]
The man who appeared to be in charge replied that the leaves were a problem for people who lived along the street. The leaves would fall on rooftops, get stuck in roof tiles and in storm shutters, and then start to rot. According to him and several others, the leaves posed a “garbage problem” (ごみ問題, gomi mondai). Each day, the crew moved farther along the road, leaving a desolate landscape of bare trunks. In a matter of weeks, the summer landscape was transformed into that of winter. These trees were decapitated, pruned back so radically, that all that remained were rows of leafless trunks.
Read the full story here.
I wish I could say this was a rare thing, but at least two Japanese towns I have lived in did the same thing to their tree-lined avenues. (And, if I recall correctly, the practice is also mentioned in Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons
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in germany they cut trees because the city hasnt money to care about them. i think this is the same.
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I doubt this is true.
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never seen or heard of such a thing here in germany…
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dont know in what kind of germany you do live but i hear it very often.
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Sorry, but I also never heard of such a thing in Germany. In which city did you experience that?
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Sorry, but I also never heard of such a thing in Germany. In which city did you experience that?–
many cities. see here:
http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&source=hp&q=b%C3%A4ume+f%C3%A4llen+weill+stadt+kein+geld+hat&meta=&aq=1&oq=
here a case of Berlin:
http://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article1051719/Berlin_verliert_seine_Strassenbaeume_aus_Geldmangel.html
many cities save their trees by sponsoring.
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They don’t cut trees TO save money.
If you read the article carefully, you’ll notice it’s about unsound and storm damaged trees being routinely cut while (notoriously cash-strapped) Berlin lacks the funds to replace every single one of them.
Completely different problem IMHO …
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they do cut trees because of money too.
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Yeah, sure. The article you cite says something completely different. Any German city that would cut trees like in Kawagoe would face serious trouble. I doubt anyone would even consider it though.
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A few weeks ago I read that in Karlsruhe they cut down 200 trees each year, but they plant 300 new ones to make up for that, and they only cut down trees that are ill or pose a danger.
I’ve never seen trees pruned like it is shown in the pictures of this article. How long do they take to grow back?
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You missed a character
You said: (ごみ問, gomi mondai)
It’s: ゴミ問題
Probably just a typo.
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I just copy-pasted it from JapanFocus. Looks like they corrected the original article since I prepared this post last night.
The JF article, which is one of – if not the worst (wow, it cites Wikipedia!) I have ever read there – does say 問題. Maybe they corrected it.
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This is insane.
In Yoyogi Park they cut quite some trees to build a new garbage dump last year. They didn’t even put the ugly dump at the far edge of the park, they put it in a fairly visible spot right next to the bicycle round course.
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Good lord. Trees have leaves!* Leaves tend to fall in autumn! That’s how it works!
If they’re going to go to such lengths to get rid of the leaves, they may as well just get rid of the entire tree and replace them with lamp posts or plastic trees or statues of robots. Any of those would look better than what they’ve got now.
This is all a bit surprising considering how far Japan has taken the whole “cool biz” concept. I’m sure at least some of these trees had been providing natural shade and cooling to businesses along this road.
*Conifer needles are technically leaves too. I’m sure there’s one or two exceptions to the rule as well.
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Yep, why didn’t they cut down the whole trees then.
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Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face. Now they get to enjoy the great views of bare tree trunks and power lines..
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I can at least understand how some people wanted it cut.
There used to be a giant maple tree in my backyard. Though it looked picturesque from a distance, every autumn the backyard would be covered in a thick layer of giant maple leaves, which would get soggy from the Pacific Northwest rain and turn into a dank mat over the lawn. It was quite an ordeal to take care of every single autumn, until my parents figured it was a safety hazard in case the tree toppled into the house from a storm, and had it cut down to a stump. The lack of shade during summer was a drawback, but I was happy for the relief from the annual chore.
For the zelkova, the tangling of power lines could probably have been avoided by better city planning, but no amount of planning could have taken care of cleaning the leaves …
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Japanese love nature.
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About as much as Americans are cowboys.
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In Tookaichba, Midori-ku Yokohama there was a sidewalk lined with 13 cherry trees with trunks so wide so could get your arms around them. The city cut down 10 of them to repave a sidewalk.
Totally unnecessary…their response was to plant five new trees with trunks I can span with one hand.
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They do this in Kyoto, too. I was appalled the first autumn I saw it….
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There’s a chance that the tree-cutting team leader didn’t really know why he was doing it, except that it was orders from above, and from his viewpoint, he’s getting paid to lop off tree tops rather than rake leaves.
I’m probably wrong, but I thought it was more of a pruning thing just to keep the trees from getting too big for 2 reasons:
a. They start to entangle themselves in the power lines above (which are present in the photo above, and seemed to be present in the cases where I’ve also seen this practice) and either that is a problem in itself, or it just prevents power outages due to typhoons knocking over trees.
b. They start to intrude into private property and become a liability to the city (again for typhoon damage, or perhaps, yes, from leaves cloggnig gutters and some lazy assholes not cleaning their own gutters and blaming the city for it, just like they complain to 7-11 about “rude” clerks)
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What a waste, leaves make excellent compost.
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Before such a local issue gets fire from every Japan lover and hater around the globe, I found a blog on this topic by a real native Japanese resident who has real concerns about this, and is having real discussions with real city workers and real representatives to work out a real solution in the Japanese language.
Note that proffesional pruners know that these trees will grow back to original size in about 5 to 10 years. There are some other costly ways to prune trees with less damage to aesethics, but basically It’s a matter of how patient people can be.
http://yamazakijirou.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/cat15469332/index.html
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I have to wonder what kind of lifestyle the author (and posters crying foul) have led to be so offended by this. Have you honestly never seen this done before?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollarding
It’s a normal procedure, practiced worldwide. It allows the trees to be maintained at a specific height, which preserves the scenic beauty that the OP is lamenting the loss of. It also reduces the amount of potential deadfall (broken branches), and keeps the trees healthy.
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True enough–I used to think plane trees were small compact trees since the ones along the streets in my neighbourhood were pollarded so drastically, precisely to avoid getting in the power lines. Then then council got rid of them altogether in favour of smaller trees.
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No, I have never seen this or heard of this being done before, and even if it’s a common practice, it doesn’t make it any less disgusting.
And how exactly can someone claim that this preserves any beauty at all? You prefer the look of chopped off leafless trees to natural leaves coloring the streets?
Raking up leaves is in no way difficult. This is an unacceptable ’solution.’
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It’s this kind of behaviour that makes all Japanese cities look like the same, generic, concrete covered mounds. It’s really, really sad.
Last year when I was in Kyoto, they attached fake red maple leaves to the lamp posts in autumn because there were no trees to turn red, I would have laughed only it was so depressing.
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Just go over the mountain to Otsu on Lake Biwa. It’s a beautiful and entirely unpretentious Japanese city with beautiful fall colours.
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What is the problem? They will be green as ever by next summer.
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I don’t know about this particular type of trees, but from my experiences seeing this kind “pruning” in action, the trees are left as mishaped ugly messes for at least several years.
Next year, tiny branches with a few leaves might sprout out of the leftover stumps, but it could take a long time for them to approach the balance and beauty of the original trees (and they’ll probably have their tops sawed-off again before getting close to such a stage of growth).
http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/murasawa1104/32752073.html
The trees will recover very soon. They know what they are doing.
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And that issue is completely ignored by the original article, which instead of trying to find out real reasons, cites a load of intellectual history to try and make some deep and meaningful comment about modern Japanese ideas towards nature.
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Oh, gaijin will never understand wabi
Wabi-sabi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
just kidding.
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Think with your head, guys. The leaves were causing problems for residents so cutting them is a good thing.
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Causing problems? All it does is show how ridiculously lazy people can be. Raking leaves is not of any great effort.
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easy for you to say…
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The leaves cause drains to clog up and the streets begin to flood. I’d rather have the trees cut than to wade to work in the morning.
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Hey you know what prevents that? Cleaning up the leaves. Amazing!
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Hey you know what that needs? Tax money. Amazing!
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as other posters above mentioned, they are a sorry looking mess for a few years. my favorite is when the cut the branches just enough leaning into the street so the trucks and pass without touching them. it just looks so awful – like biting your nails to the quick. yes, they will grow back but it is painful.
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Seriously. This is one of the worst things you can do to a tree. Just deal with it, or get rid of the trees altogether.
http://www.steamboats.com/hobbies/treetoppinglinks.html
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As someone who is unlucky enough to live in a climate where autumn foliage never happens, this news saddens me greatly. I would gladly put up with raking a bunch of leaves if that means I get the enjoy their beauty.
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Hopefully those people will never decide that fingernails are too much trouble.
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There’s strong pruning and soft pruning （強剪定／弱剪定）. Strong pruning, or topping in English, costs less but if done badly, it risks damaging the tree significantly. (In the long run it may cost more). My personal opinion is local government should spend more money properly pruning trees that are public property and locals should also cooperate raking the leaves. It must be good for the community.
if you have genuine interest. search zapanese word 強剪定 街路樹
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Still not understanding the hippies here. The leaves clog the drains and get stuck and rot in people’s roof tiles. You’re putting people below trees.
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Well, people are below trees, since trees are taller and tower over them and all that. But yeah, god forbid we put up with any inconvenience for the sake of stupid things like beauty and greenery and nature.
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In this particular case there was no other way to solve the problem.
But your missing the point of the argument.
The city let the tree grow oversize, and decide to mow off the top of the trees like in the picture above because it costs less, when actually it could cost more in the future to uproot rotten trees which happens more often with this method, and it is all done with taxpayer money.
If the city pruned the trees before it hovered over people’s rooftops, and continued to do so more often with professional care, it may have cost more initially, but in the long run you preserve the scenery (which may effect the price of realestate), you provide shade in summer, and you create jobs for skilled pruners.
It’s about poor city planning on both parts, local government and residents.
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ah you just said it yourself
“it may have cost more initially, ”
its a cost and hazard thing and people dont want to pay more in taxes to the local goverment here.not poor planning!
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Yeah, I said it was right to cut it down in this case.
But in the long run it can devalue realestate. The city wants more people to move into a nice looking neigborhood right? That means more income.
The scenery just proves the city has low budget. From what I read from actual resident’S blogs, and articles contributed by locals, some want the city to put more money into long term plans that will make the city safe and nice looking.
I worked as a pruner when I was younger. There are methods to prune them nicely and safely. It just requires more attention by skilled professionals and careful planning.
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they try city the Japanese garden like this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EjsPPLG6tU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fEgT-48IO0
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That’s bad, they had sawn off too much.
I haven’t inspected well though, please let me say some. Maybe, one of the problem is that they did not have enough wider sidewalk to ensure that nearly all leaves fall onto there? Also note that many Japanese cities and towns have the problem of typhoon arrival. Branches snapped by strong wind may damage electric wires hence it increases the possibility of the interruption of the power supply in the nearby area. But a beautiful scenery and gracious shade in a hot summer was lost. I know an example that a (supposedly) 800-year-old camphor tree in a shrine seems to be sawn some branches off, maybe, because of road and wires nearby.
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Nature is dirty, so okay to cut!.
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Topping ain’t pruning, or “pollarding” or anything else.
This is stupid because the practice is going to kill a number of the trees outright and they’ll be back to remove those and will have to replant. So three trips… One to top the tree, one to remove the dead tree, and finally a last trip to replant.
Prune it right or just remove the things!
Oh, and…
LOL @ people cutting down large shade trees because they are too lazy to rake leaves. The very definition of lame.
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I swear this entire part of the world should have branches of their trees taken away from them until they learn to treat them properly.
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Dammit, you owe me a new keyboard now!
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totally…this entire part of the world should practice raking imaginary leaves until they get it right.
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I guess these people would rather destroy their town’s scenery, and make the place ugly and an eyesore by removing the beautiful trees, than simply do what many people the world over do: get their asses out of the house and clean the rain gutters.
Good job making the town ugly guys!
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comparing these two pictures, it went from beautiful Japanese to a small town in america. lol
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The scenery got another beauty, the azure?
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I’ve seen this around southern Hyogo/Osaka, too.
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Is this also the reason for the cut trees in this picture from Wako City (near Tokyo)? Does anyone know that?
http://philippstern.de/blog/media/1/20080204-img_0204.jpg
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Wako city in Saitama prefecture? In your picture, there are too many electric wires and a tree has overly grown up apparently. I don’t know actual reasons, but I think they’d better to remove those trees and plant azaleas instead.
By the way, I found a blog entry, written by a member of the municipal assembly of Wako city, Saitama prefecture, making mention of greens and trees in the city. Here is some of excerpt from that (translated by me without permission):
In my opinion, the most of those miserable figures of trees is a result of a poor city planning. There might be many such cases in Japan now, but there should be many good examples too. There may be many people who are seriously considering about maintainance of greens and trees in a more practical and efficient way.
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This happens in Korea as well. I was living in Anyang a few years when they started putting signs on all the trees that said “Anyang, the Green City” and stuff like that.
Then a few weeks later they sawed off most of the branches on the trees on the street running by my girlfriend’s apartment building.
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