ABSTRACT
The ‹rst written record of charcoal use in agriculture in Japan is in the Nogyo Zensho, an agricultural encyclopedia written in 1697 during the Edo period (1603-1867) by the wandering samurai-turned-peasant Yasusada Miyazaki, although there is reason to believe the practice has a much longer history throughout Asia. The emergence of the practice itself is less likely the result of planned experimentation and more likely the serendipitous result of the cyclical nature of traditional Japanese agricultural in which organic wastes and byproducts from daily living are meticulously recycled, composted, and applied to ‹elds and gardens. Of course, throughout Japanese history, charcoal’s primary use was as a source of fuel, where it was used for heating and cooking along with ‹rewood or straw. Ash and cinders from household hearths and ‹replaces were mixed with compost and used on agricultural lands. It was common for farmers to spend their winters making charcoal from hard and soft woods, the feedstock garnered from carefully managed forestland from nearby mountains (referred to as satoyama) and then set off down to cities for sale. Subsequently, the ash and charred wood produced in urban dwellings were purchased by farmers or ash traders and brought back to the countryside to be composted and amended to ‹elds (Ishikawa 2000).
