By May 2008, the number of FSC-CoC certificates issued in Japan came to 697, the third in the world. Pulp and paper products companies constitute about 80% of the total certificates holders. The tendency opposes the worldwide one which has seen timber industry occupies the majority. The purpose of this report is to reveal the rapid development of FSC-CoC certificates in Japan, and to consider the problems and future prospects of it. In the early stage, large paper companies played leading rolls, that is, certificates of them have affected their affiliates and customers. While the industry have taken action on a certificate since 2001, it was not until around 2004 that certified paper products started to be publicly recognized as environmental-friendly paper other than recycled paper. The movement toward certificate in suppliers such as many large paper companies and wholesalers, coupled with recent increasing consumers' (mainly business enterprises) interests in certified products, led to the surge in certificates of printing company or retailer. However, in addition to the fact that FSC isn't well known to consuming public, it is most likely that paper products certified by several different forest certificate schemes will arrive on the market in the near future. Certified companies will need to publicize the meaning and difference of each certificate scheme for developing the new market and avoiding confusion for consumers.

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As of October 2008, the forest area certified by FSC or SGEC came to 1,006,612ha. Because the primary mission of forest certification is to promote sustainable forest management, it is important to study the effects of a certification on forest management for evaluating the significance of such scheme. This paper observed how the forest management changed as the result of SGEC certification by analyzing "Corrective Action Requests (CARs)" raised in the certification reports of 56 certified forests and 27 reports of annual survey. In addition, we compared the CARs of SGEC to FSC, and considered the feature of each scheme. SGEC put much emphasis on "Conservation of Biological Diversity" when examining the forest management. There was possibility that each SGEC certification body emphasized different criterion. As FSC, SGEC also required many forests to improve their monitoring system and riparian management, which were considered to be the common weakness of Japanese forestry. Though less information was made public than FSC, SGEC made sure that CARs had been improved by the annual survey. Thus, we could say that as with FSC, SGEC improved the forest management. It is desirable to clarify the difference of FSC and SGEC so that forest managers or consumers were able to choice the scheme according to their purpose or policy, and both schemes should work together to improve the forest management.

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We examined whether FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certification changed the market structure of certificated organizations in Japan to evaluate the effect of the certification on the promotion of timber sales. In July 2007, we conducted a questionnaire survey and interviews with 5 forest owners' cooperatives among 11 forest certificated organizations. The survey revealed that only three cooperatives sold certificated timber, in two of which cooperatives the changes in the market structure enabled the sales of certificated timber. One of the two cooperatives established a system for selling certificated timber to end-users, but the other had not succeeded to establish it despite of its effort. In addition, some forest owners' cooperative answered that there was a poor demand for certificated timber. These results indicated; forest certificated organizations should establish a steady system for supplying certificated timber to every end-users by deliberate obtaining forest certification; they should make more effort to create great demand for certificated timber.

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With the exception of preservation areas, the natural stand of Japanese cedar grown in the east of Kochi Prefecture called YANASESUGI is currently decreasing by some causes such as cutting. Moreover, it is in difficult situation to restore the mature forest of YANASESUGI by natural regeneration because of lack of young growths. To revitalize natural regeneration, the Forest Technology Center of Shikoku Regional Forest Office has commenced the study on the regeneration by natural seeding of YANASESUGI. The following results were obtained from one year of study: i) the larger the number of young growth at the beginning of the study the larger the increase in the number of young growth during the study period, ii) the number of the young growth survived during the study period was larger in the gap of smaller area ("heli-gap") than in the gap of larger area ("wire-gap")- iii) In most of the study plots, the number of young growth increased during the study period, but it decreased in the plots with transmittance of scattered light exceeding 50%. iv) a tendency was observed that the higher the ratio of light shielding by litter was, the smaller the number of young growths was. v) Influence of light shielding by litter varied depending on gap area.

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Leaf water potential and other water-related characteristics were compared between trees of thinned and unthinned stands in a Hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa) plantation 8 months after thinning to assess the effects of heavy thinning (about 50% of trunk volume) on the water stress of the remaining trees. Predawn leaf water potential was more than - 0.53 MPa in both thinned and unthinned stands, with no marked difference. In addition, comparisons of water potential at the tugor loss point (ψ_w^<tlp>), relative water content (RWC^<tlp>) and osmotic potential at full turgor (ψ_s^<sat>) using the P-V curve method also showed no significant difference between thinned and unthinned stands. Results indicate that after heavy thinning, remaining trees are not subjected to high water stress.

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