Re-evaluating a tree’s ‘real worth’: The historical dispossession of ecological stewardship and its legacy for a Japanese textile tradition

Abstract

This article explores the precarity that surrounds the acquisition of techigi (yeddo hawthorn) trees, a material used in the production of traditional and contemporary textiles, on the island of Amami Ōshima, southern Japan. A waste product of industrial forestry, the article suggests that the difficulties craftspeople face in accessing techigi are symptoms of complex historical and contemporary processes linked to property regimes and resource management that have dispossessed local residents of ecological stewardship.