The award-winning book from Professor David Fedman, a historian at the University of California Irvine, is a thoroughly researched journey through the fascinating history of a perhaps less familiar aspect of colonial Korea. The book begins with a foreword by Paul S. Sutter (University of Colorado Boulder) that informs readers of the many complexities of the historical developments related to forest management, policy, research, and economics during Korea's colonial period. The Japanese occupiers were not merely concerned with enlarging business opportunities and profit from the extensive forests on the Korean penin-sula, but also with cultural and political functions of forests and the landscape. The following ten chapters skillfully interpret developments related to forests and nature in Meiji era Japan (1868-1912) and take readers to the most recent shift in the forest industry in Korea.
Chapters 1 and 2 comprise Part I of this story, Roots. Near the beginning of the book we are introduced to the dangers, according to traditional forestry concepts in Japan, of"red pine advance" - the process of forest succession that could result in the replacement of tree species such as oak and beech with more shade intolerant red pine. The desire to avoid exaggerated dominance of red pine in forested landscapes partly led to the incorporation of the concepts and techniques of forest management into a broader societal mindset of "forest-love thought" (airin shiso in Japanese) in late 19th century Japan. Thus "forest-love thought" included notions not only of
