Indigenous Forests – Heritage Food Literacy

Indigenous
Forests

Forests have long been the common resource of adjacent peoples, managed both privately and communally in locally adapted ways for generations. Models such as public ownership and management, often under Ministries for Environment, Forestry, or Agriculture, began to reshape the “commons” model in the past two centuries. Forest management by universities or research institutions (and nowadays by environmental organizations or trusts) emerged as a secondary form of resource management, sometimes as part of colonial or foreign aid enterprises. In this section, we explore the unique characteristics of these unique forest managers, namely universities and civil society. A feature case study here includes the research forests initiated by Japanese universities (often under imperial control), both within Japan as well as in colonized countries.

Taiwan

Security road through Liugui Experimental Forest in colonial Taiwan. Undated (pre-1945). (Research Resource Archive, Kyoto University Forests Collection,1928-1986)

We examine the historical development of the Liugui Experimental Forest in southern Taiwan, established during Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945) and later maintained under Chinese Nationalist governance. It traces the complex relationship between colonial forestry management and indigenous communities, from initial tensions marked by the construction of the Liugui Security Fence to eventual accommodations and knowledge exchange. The summary highlights how indigenous laborers, despite their subordinate position in the colonial hierarchy, contributed valuable local expertise that Japanese forestry officials gradually came to recognize and incorporate into their scientific practices. By the 1930s, this integration of local knowledge with colonial forestry systems contributed to Taiwan's dramatically increased timber production. The post-colonial transition maintained many of the experimental forest's physical boundaries while reframing its purpose, leaving a contested legacy that continues to influence contemporary approaches to forest management and indigenous rights in Taiwan.

Japan

Researchers from Kyoto University evaluating trees in Ashiu Experimental Forest in the snow. Undated, likely 1940s. (Research Resource Archive, Kyoto University Forests Collection,1928-1986)

The Ashiu Forest Research Station, established in 1921 by Kyoto Imperial University through a 99-year profit-sharing arrangement with local villages, exemplifies the evolving relationship between academic institutions and forest resources in Japan. Initially serving extractive purposes—providing timber, mushrooms, and charcoal for university use, and economic returns—the forest's management gradually transformed over its century-long history. The post-war decades saw peak timber harvesting in the 1960s before environmental consciousness in the 1970s began shifting priorities toward research and conservation. This transition culminated in the early 2000s with the forest's integration into Kyoto University's interdisciplinary Field Science Education and Research Center and its 2016 designation as part of Kyoto Tamba Highlands National Park. When the original lease expired in 2020, the university negotiated a new 30-year agreement that better serves local communities through consistent rent and eco-tourism support, marking the complete evolution from exploitation to conservation, from transactional relationships to collaborative stewardship of this ecologically significant landscape.

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