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Forestry and the emptying of the mountains
After the Second World War, Japan's demand for timber for reconstruction and housing was enormous, and mountain villages planted and cut cedar (杉) and cypress (ひのき) on a large scale. In the 1950s and 1960s, many forestry towns were at their most populous. Timber was moved by truck, rail and, on some rivers, by floating it downstream as logs or rafts. From the 1960s, imports of cheaper foreign timber grew steadily after trade was liberalized, and domestic forestry declined. Young people left for cities and factory work, and many mountain towns lost half or more of their population over the following decades. The cedar plantations remain, and are also behind Japan's well-known spring pollen allergies. Oral histories like the one Alex is recording preserve this period in the speakers' own words and dialect. The grammar of this lesson is the grammar of memory and circumstance: たものだ, 折に, をよそに, ともなると and とあって.