Trail maintenance connects history and nature in Japan

Participants in the SANU Regenerative Club joined the Hokuto Yamamoritai to repair hiking trails on Mount Hinayama in Hokuto City, Yamanashi Prefecture.

The group, organized by the regenerative promotion office of SANU Co., Ltd., aimed to move beyond consuming nature toward a cycle where human interaction makes the environment richer. They spent two days learning about the long relationship between Japanese people and mountains before performing physical labor to restore the paths.

Former mountaineer Yasuhiro Hanaya, who founded the Hokuto Yamamoritai, explained that Japanese mountains historically served as places for rural life, religious worship, and modern leisure. Since the late 1950s, energy revolutions and the decline of mountain worship shifted the relationship with the mountains toward one-sided use.

Hanaya noted that while modern hiking boomed after 1956, the local mountain clubs that maintained the paths on Mount Hinayama eventually stopped their work due to an aging membership, leaving the trails to erode from heavy rain and frequent use. Technical leader Hoshi and the team repaired the trails by focusing on the flow of water and the movement of people. They installed logs, branches, and soil bags to stabilize the ground and create "gardens" to protect vegetation.

These repairs are designed to work with nature over time, such as using logs that will eventually decay as tree roots grow to support the path. Hanaya noted that while deer populations in Yamanashi Prefecture have surged far beyond the sustainable level of 5,000, these maintenance efforts aim to prevent further degradation and protect the watershed for the surrounding communities.