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Abstract:
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"In Shimosuwa of Nagano Prefecture, there is a national forest where the community people participate in the management of religious trees that are used for their traditional festival called Onbashira-sai. The highlight of the festival is the part where participants drag out huge logs of religious trees (onbashira) from the mountain to the town and haul them as pillars for four shrine buildings. The fir trees used as onbashira grow in the high mountain forest in Suwa region with great biodiversity. Since Edo period, people of Shimosuwa have cultivated the trees in the same area of the government forest. How has the community's religious common pool continued in the government forest? It can be seen as dynamic co-management of the forest throughout history. During Edo period, the forest was owned by the local clan, and it was a rich common pool of various resources including hawks as offerings to the shogun, timbers, firewoods, fertilizer, and materials of livelihoods for the people. The clan permitted some villages to use resources in limited areas as the commons on the condition of managing them. To preserve hawks' habitat, the clan appointed the managers among the nearest villages and gave them strong authority for guarding the sites. The forest was governed by multileveled authority figures with hierarchical power depending on the value of the resources. Even when the use of the forest was condemned by Meiji government, the community demanded to continue cultivating their religious trees, and the new government could not neglect the legitimacy of cultural and religious tradition. In more recent years, the community concerned with the sustainability of the forest and its trees organized volunteers for tree conservation and signed a contract with the Agency of National Forest to co-manage the forest where they cultivate trees for onbashira. This paper offers an example of cultural commons with non-consumptive uses that became a strong motivation for sustaining the common pool."
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