Junko Otsuka quit her job in Tokyo and headed for the woods.
She is part of a new wave of women taking forestry jobs, the result of economic, social and environmental policies sprouting in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new Japan.
Otsuka, 30, a University of Tokyo graduate, said she’s fine with the 20pc pay cut to be the first female logger at Tokyo Chainsaws, a lumber company. The Sugi and Hinoki trees she harvests – cedars and cypresses in Japan – are used to build local homes under the government’s program to encourage the use of domestic wood.
Otsuka is one of about 3,000 women joining Abe’s campaign to revive forestry and logging as part of his growth strategy for the country.
More than two-thirds of Japan’s roughly 146,000 square miles of land is wooded, much of it reforested after widespread harvesting for rebuilding following World War II.
