J For Res (2004) 9:283–288
DOI 10.1007/s10310-004-0107-x
KEYNOTE SPEECH
Hirofumi Uzawa
Forest and social common capital
This paper is based on a talk given
by Professor Uzawa on the occasion
of the 90th anniversary of the Japa-
nese Forestry Society.
The concept of social common
capital has existed as an undercur-
rent in the discipline of economics
as far back as Adam Smith, but I
believe I was the first to coin
the term “social common capital”.
So, I would like to begin by explain-
ing what I mean by social common
capital.
The concept of social common capital
It happens that the brother of JFS President Suzuki,
who spoke just a short while ago, is married to the Austra-
lian scholar Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Tessa Morris-Suzuki has
done wide-ranging research on Japan, and in particular on
Japanese economic thought and current affairs, and has
distinguished herself as one of Australia’s pre-eminent
scholars in this area. About 15 years ago, in 1989, she pub-
lished an excellent book entitled A History of Japanese
Economic Thought, which has been translated into Japa-
nese and has become one of the most important textbooks
for university courses on the subject. Her book describes a
history of economic ideas conceived and developed in
Japan. The history begins with the Edo-period thinker
Ando Shoeki, and concludes with a discussion of my theo-
ries. In the process, it provides a very clear explanation of
social common capital.
In fact, it was an extremely valuable experience for me
to read Dr. Morris-Suzuki’s book. At that time I was
H. Uzawa (*)
Professor Emeritus, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku,
Tokyo 113-8654, Japan
© The Japanese Forestry Society and Springer-Verlag Tokyo 2004
Special feature: Environmental changes
and role of forest in Asia
still struggling with the concept of social common capital,
but after reading her account, I knew exactly how to
proceed.
The concept of social common capital, then, was in all
likelihood born in Japan, but it is fast emerging as one of
the pivotal economic concepts of the twenty-first century.
And the single most important component of social com-
mon capital is the forest. For this reason, it makes me
doubly glad to have the opportunity to speak on the
subject of forests as social common capital.
The twentieth century has been termed the century of
capitalism and socialism, among other things. The
conflict and rivalry between these two inimical economic
systems has threatened international peace and caused
great pain and suffering in various parts of the world.
Moreover, the turmoil witnessed during the final decades
of the twentieth century gave new meaning to the concept
of fin-de-siècle upheaval. Now, as we strive to transcend
that conflict and clear the way for a new era in the
twenty-first century, institutionalism has re-emerged as the
most useful approach to economics. At the heart of
institutionalism lies social common capital.
There are two historical documents that perfectly em-
body the trends of the twentieth century. One is the
encyc- lical of Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, meaning
“of new things” and sometimes translated by Japanese
Catholics as Kakumei or “Revolution.” An encyclical is a
document, distributed to bishops all over the world, in
which the Pope defines and analyzes the most important
issues facing the world at that time. At least one
encyclical, although it can be many more, is issued during
a papacy, outlining the official public stance of the
Roman Catholic Church.
In the Rerum Novarum (with the theme “abuses of
capi- talism and illusions of socialism”), Leo XII
discussed at length the evils of capitalism, revealing how
in many coun- tries, especially in Europe, the capitalist
classes mercilessly exploited the workers and the masses
in the greedy pursuit of personal profit, and noting how
exploitation of the masses in England’s new industrial
cities had reduced the common people, and especially the
children, to wretched and impoverished lives.
 2
Leo XIII also pointed out, however, that the idea that
socialism would solve these problems, a notion current John Paul II has long lamented such global
among many people at that time, was a grave mistake; he environmen- tal problems as climate change and for that
insisted that, to the contrary, even more serious problems reason has repeatedly stressed the importance of preserving
were inevitable under socialism. In this historic the earth’s forests. To my mind, therefore, the concept of
document, the Pope explained at length the dangers of social com- mon capital is in one sense a response to the
socialism, argu- ing that it was a denial of what made challenge put forth by John Paul II. Simply put, social
human beings human. He insisted that it was necessary common capital refers to the social infrastructure and
instead for the classes to work together to find a solution systems as well as the natural environment that allows the
transcending the dichotomy between capitalism and people living in a coun- try or a region to carry on decent
socialism. lives, create and preserve a rich and refined culture, and
support a society congenial to human happiness and
Unfortunately, the twentieth-century world ignored the
fulfillment in a stable and sustainable manner.
admonitions of Leo XIII. Beginning with the Russian Revo-
lution of 1917, one country after another became a
socialist country until at one point one-third of the
world’s popula- tion was under socialist rule. On 15 May Social common capital and the environment
1991, a century after Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum,
Pope John Paul II issued a new “rerum novarum” on the
To illustrate the concept in more concrete terms, forests,
theme “abuses of socialism and illusions of capitalism.”
rivers, oceans, and other aspects of the environment are
This was a critical moment in history. The Berlin Wall
essential social common capital, as are such social infra-
had just fallen, and a number of Eastern European
structure as roads, public transport, and various energy
countries had emerged from Soviet dominance and were
facilities. Education, health-care, justice, financial, and
engaged in building new na- tions, but the Soviet
other forms of institutional capital are also considered so-
Communist Party and the Soviet State itself remained
cial common capital. As a whole, these could be described
intact.
as institutions or resources that make possible a society
In his new “rerum novarum,” John Paul II was sharply
where human dignity is respected, and where people can
critical of the socialist regime under the leadership of the
remain independent in spirit and enjoy civil life to the full.
Soviet Union. He enumerated the evils it had perpetrated:
Economically, social common capital can be approached
it had degraded the environment, fragmented the
from a number of different angles. This is perfectly illus-
economy, laid cultures to waste, and ridden roughshod
trated by forests, which are made up primarily of trees and
over basic human rights. But he also stressed that it was a
provide a habitat for wildlife and a place where
great mistake simply to assume, as so many did, that
mushrooms can grow, for example. Until now, the standard
capitalism would solve all these problems. John Paul II
approach of economics has been to measure the value of
reminded everyone that capitalism had its own problems
a forest in terms of the profit to be made by cutting down
and, to illus- trate the point, he provided a detailed
the trees and selling the timber. But a forest also plays
analysis of the deplorable state of American capitalist
an extremely important role in the lives of the people in
society.
and around it in respect to agriculture, cultural activity, and
John Paul II, of course, is a Pole who lived through 40
so forth. For this reason, it is a mistake to measure the
hard years of Soviet domination, struggling against
value of a forest according to the traditional economic,
oppression and risking his own life to protect the human
or capitalist, ap- proach of assessing how much the lumber
spirit in an oppressive communist Russian rule. After he
will sell for on the
became Pope, he left Poland for the first time to travel to
market.
the Vatican. Liberal in his thinking, John Paul II called on
Forests have a multitude of functions. For example, vari-
economists to consider solutions to the problems facing
ous microorganisms in the soil purify the rainwater when
the world.
it soaks into the ground. That underflow water becomes
In fact, I myself was called on to assist the Pope in
river water that enriches people’s lives and keeps the
drafting his new “rerum novarum,” and I felt deeply hon-
environ- ment beautiful. To approach the forest as social
ored when I later discovered that it was the first time in
common capital is to assess all its functions and then decide
the Roman Catholic Church’s 2000-year history that
how best to manage and maintain them from a social
someone outside the church had contributed to the
standpoint, not simply for the present generation but for
drafting of a papal encyclical. This new “rerum novarum”
our children as well.
also ex- pounded on the need to transcend both the evils
For several years, now, students at the United Nations
of social- ism and the illusions of capitalism and seek the
University Institute of Advanced Studies have come to
kind of economic and social system that protects the human
Japan, where I have supervised them as they finish their
dignity of all, fosters an independent spirit, and guarantees
PhD dissertations. One of these was an excellent student
the civil rights of every individual.
from Brazil, and his doctoral dissertation was on this very
Just a few months after the new “rerum novarum” was
theme. In the pharmaceutical industry, which is now cen-
issued, the August revolution brought down the Soviet
tered in the USA, it seems that when a company is
Communist Party, and by the following December the
develop- ing a new drug, it often sends an expert to visit
situ- ation had progressed to its historic climax, the
one of the indigenous tribes living in or near the Amazon
dissolution of the Soviet Union itself. It seems to me that
rainforest.
the new “rerum novarum” may well have played a role in
hastening these developments.

Each tribe has a shaman, or a medicine man, who
functions as both a teacher and a doctor and, as part of his
job, he is extremely knowledgeable about what symptoms
are allevi- ated by which trees, leaves, small animals,
soils, minerals, and so forth. Apparently some shamans
know some 5000 prescriptions. So, the expert from the
pharmaceutical com- pany goes, gets samples, brings them
back, and the company analyzes the medicine and
produces a new drug in its own laboratories.
Since these indigenous people seem quite
impoverished, the government of Brazil devised a system
whereby the American pharmaceutical firms would pay
royalties to the shamans for each sample they used to
develop new drugs. Since it was a small amount from the
companies’ viewpoint, they agreed to pay it. But every one
of the shamans refused to accept the money. They said
that the fact that their knowledge was being put to use for
the good of humankind was the most gratifying thing they
could imagine, and that it would be base to accept money
for that. So the government of Brazil set up an agency to
handle the royalties, and bureaucrats used up all the
money so that none of it went to the shamans. But the
thrust of this young man’s dissertation was that it was better
that way for the shamans and for the indigenous peoples
themselves.
It seems to me that, in the way they live, these shamans
embody the way of life extolled by the two Popes in their
encyclicals; a society in which human beings can preserve
their humanity. The concept of social common capital
strives to approach things like forest management in the
same way.
Sustainable economic development
Historically speaking, the concept of social common capital
can be traced back to John Stewart Mill, who lived about
150 years ago. In 1848, Mill published an excellent and
weighty textbook called Principles of Political Economy,
explaining the ideas of classical economics, beginning
with Adam Smith. When I was a student, almost no one
read it. You see, in the same year, Marx and Engels
published their Communist Manifesto. John Stewart Mill
was extremely critical of Marxist economics, but for
many years the ideas of Marx were much more in vogue
with economists than those put forth by John Stewart
Mill. When I was a student, almost all the economics
textbooks were written by Marxist economists. One of my
professors actually forbade us to read John Stewart Mill.
Near the end of Mill’s book is a chapter entitled “Of
the stationary states.” A stationary state as envisioned by
Mill is somewhat different from the concept we have
today. A stationary state is a state in which all
macroeconomic vari- ables such as national income,
consumption, investment, and the cost of living remain
constant from year to year. John Stewart Mill believed
that when the economy had reached this phase, it would
herald the advent of a kind of social utopia characterized
by a rich and refined culture, abundant human
communication, new technologies and
2
new products, and fulfilling human lives. Mill concludes in
his book that this sort of society is, indeed, the world toward
which the classical economics of Adam Smith strives.
However, this inevitably raised the question: Isn’t a state
in which all macroeconomic variables are static in fact in-
compatible with a society with an elegant, refined culture,
rich human interchange, and so forth? It was the
American economist Thorstein Veblen, an economist at
the Univer- sity of Chicago, who answered that question.
Veblen be- lieved that it was the job of economists to
ascertain what sort of system could yield John Stewart
Mill’s “stationary state.” In this way, Veblen founded the
school of institu- tional economics.
Institutionalism dominated the economics departments
of US universities throughout the first half of the
twentieth century. However, Thorstein Veblen’s
successors took the institutional school in a different
direction. Instead of dealing with theoretical issues and
the most basic issues of economics, they focused on the
analysis of statistical data.
When Thorstein Veblen was teaching at the University
of Chicago, one of his colleagues was the philosopher
John Dewey. Dewey formulated a philosophy of
liberalism that developed John Stewart Mill’s ideas about
how human being should live, with the focus on liberty,
the human spirit, and so forth. Then he applied that
philosophy to the field of education.
The University of Chicago was actually founded by John
D. Rockefeller. With some of the millions he had made,
Rockefeller initially wanted to contribute to Harvard to
have a new building named after him, but Harvard didn’t
want to accept a contribution like that from such a notori-
ous “robber baron.” Rockefeller then approached Yale,
but was turned down by Yale as well. Outraged, he
founded his own university, the University of Chicago,
and in its early days he had a great influence on the
school.
In fact, both Thorstein Veblen and John Dewey were
eventually forced to leave the University of Chicago.
Veblen went to Stanford, and Dewey went to Columbia,
where he established a teachers’ college that was to set
the pace for American thinking on education
throughout the twentieth century. But almost 30 years
later they were reunited as two of the founders of the New
School for Social Research in New York.
The New School for Social Research was created by a
group of scholars who had gravitated to New York during
World War I amid anxiety over the future of European
civilization. Veblen and Dewey were central figures in the
school’s administration, and institutional economics was
part of its ideological foundation. And the key issue
econo- mists addressed as they explored the question of
how to create an economic system embodying the ideals
of institu- tionalism was the management and
maintenance of social common capital.
 2
Historical role of the commons
As the example of the forest clearly illustrates, the problems
of managing social common capital cannot be solved by
adopting a system of private ownership (dividing ownership
rights among individuals). Yet neither is management by
the state or some other public agency desirable. The best
approach is a system of shared property – in Japanese,
iriai
– whereby those who dwell near the forest, live with it,
and actually make use of it in their lives, come together to
decide how to maintain it, how to use it, and how to
provide the labor.
During the Meiji era, the government passed
legislation whose ostensible purpose was to put in place a
legal system for iriai. However, the real thrust of it was to
gradually replace iriai with either private property or state
manage- ment. The purpose of the law, in other words,
was to decide a process for disposing of the rights and
obligations attend- ing iriai when such land was
transferred to private owner- ship or state control. This
virtually destroyed the iriai system that had supported
Japan’s farming villages for centuries. The most famous
instance of conflict over the revocation of iriai rights was
the Kotsunagi incident, whose after-effects continue to this
day.
In fact, this sort of system, in which the people of a
village gather and decide among them the best way to main-
tain and manage forestland or other natural resources
could once be found in almost every country in the world,
although the names and details of the systems differ.
However, as in the case of Kotsunagi, such commonly
owned property has generally been transferred either to
private ownership or to government management during
the modernization process, and today very few examples
of such common property remain. About 15 years ago,
how- ever, a number of scholars began direct their
attention to the merits of iriai and similar systems, and
the term they agreed on was “commons.” They founded
what has become very large organization, the International
Association for the Study of Common Property. Margaret
McKean, who was selected to serve as president of this
association about 10 years ago, did research at the
University of Tokyo Insti- tute of Social Science under
Takeshi Ishida, and the subject of her thesis was common
property rights in Kotsunagi. I was very impressed and
moved when she was chosen to serve as president of this
world organization.
Understanding commons
In 1968, Garrett Hardin published an article titled “Tragedy
of the commons” in the journal Science. Hardin used the old
English tradition of a common pasture to illustrate his thesis
that freedom in a commons results in “ruin for all.” If the
pasture is available for each individual to use freely, he
argues, then all will bring their sheep there to graze, and
eventually the pasture will be laid to ruin, and everyone will
suffer. Hardin’s message seems to have been that clear divi-
sion of property among individuals is the only way to avoid
this tragedy.
In the 1980s, this thesis became the starting point for a
global trend toward privatization, advanced by Margaret
Thatcher in Britain, Ronald Reagan in the USA, and
Yasuhiro Nakasone in Japan, a trend that did tremendous
harm around the world. In fact, the International Associa-
tion for the Study of Common Property was founded in a
climate of remorse for the excesses of the 1980s. Among
the examples of common property systems most often
cited by members of the association are Japan’s forest
iriai and fishery cooperatives.
Recently attention has focused on the iriai system for
irrigation from the Manno-ike reservoir in Shikoku’s
Kagawa Prefecture, formerly known as Sanuki Province.
Manno-ike is a huge irrigation reservoir some 20 km in
circumference. It was initially built in the sixth or seventh
century, but because of its great size, its banks soon col-
lapsed. The person who finally succeeded in repairing them
was the great priest Kukai.
Kukai was a native of Sanuki province who had earlier
traveled to Chang-an, the capital of Tang China, to study.
In China he read and was deeply impressed by the
Chinese priest Faxian’s record of his travels in India and
Sri Lanka. Born in the fourth century under the Eastern
Jin dynasty, Faxian traveled to India to study Buddhism.
However, by that time Buddhism was all but extinct in
India, so he went to Sri Lanka and spent about 20 years
there, assiduously studying not only the Buddhist
scriptures but also the latest technologies and engineering
systems. The most important of these was the system of
reservoir irrigation.
In those days, most of the agriculture in Sri Lanka was
highland farming. Sri Lanka experiences two monsoons
each year and the rest of the time is almost completely
dry. Therefore, countless reservoirs were built all over the
island, and they were able to support a very advanced
level of agriculture. Furthermore, the reservoirs were one
of the reasons for the ancient Sri Lankan capital being
considered one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
All the homes drew water from the reservoirs for their
gardens, which grew magnificent shrubs and trees and
beautified the entire city.
Ordinarily a Japanese monk who traveled to China
would remain there studying for 15–20 years, but Kukai
returned after 2 years. Soon afterward, the imperial court
dispatched him to take charge of the repair of Manno-ike,
and with the help of many farmers in the area he
completed this daunting task. He used the knowledge he
had gained from Faxian’s writings regarding Sri Lanka,
which covered not only civil engineering technology but
also a detailed analysis of the method for managing this
common property, including distribution of the labor
burden. Although Manno-ike required other repairs from
time to time, it never again suffered problems of that
magnitude, and it is still in use today. Several years ago
the Japan Society of Civil Engineers published a
photographic collection to com- memorate its 100th
anniversary, and near the beginning of the volume,
Manno-ike appears as an example of ancient Japanese
civil engineering technology. After the repair was
 2
complete, Kukai traveled around Japan spreading this
reservoir-building know-how. with the farmers’ way of life that they adopted it themselves
Sri Lanka was later colonized, first by the Portuguese on a permanent basis.
and then by the British. When the British took over, So, while my job as mediator was over, the fact was
they had their army destroy the reservoirs completely that after decades of struggle, first during the student
and switched to a system of damming large rivers and protests of the early 1960s and then during the protracted
using those dams for irrigation. Why did they destroy the Narita airport dispute, these people of the younger
reservoirs? generation who had lived among the Narita families for
almost 30 years were going to lose their homes and would
With a reservoir, a village is independent. But when
have no place to go. So I shifted my focus to that problem,
the water is drawn from a major river through a system
and the idea I came up with was to establish a working
controlled by a centralized authority, the village loses that
model of a common-property farming village in
independence. Damming large rivers for irrigation is thus
Sanrizuka, not far from the airport.
a system well suited to colonialism.
However, the farmers had no use for a foreign word
Another thing the British did was to cut down the
like “commons,” and even the term kyodotai (community)
forests and create rubber and tea plantations. As a result
pro- voked a negative response. So, with great difficulty, I
of these policies, Sri Lanka’s rivers became polluted, and its
began the task of setting up what I called the Sanrizuka
agricul- tural productivity plummeted. Even today, Sri
Nosha. The no in nosha refers to agriculture, and sha is
Lanka’s agri- cultural sector is among the least productive
written with a Chinese character that originally referred to
in the world, and an important reason, it is said, is that the
cultivation of the soil but gradually came to refer to the
British de- stroyed the commons of the reservoirs and
gods of agricul- ture, and then to the shrines where such
replaced reser- voir irrigation with a centralized system of
gods were wor- shipped. The people of a hamlet would
irrigation from major rivers.
gather at such a shrine to deliberate and reach decisions
Several years ago, when I was invited to celebrate the
on important matters. Still later, during the Yuan dynasty,
anniversary of Sri Lanka’s independence, the Sri Lankans
a sha (she in Mandarin Chinese) was the country’s
told me they wanted to send a commission to Japan to study
smallest administra- tive unit, consisting of 50 farming
its reservoir technology, since Sri Lanka had lost its own.
households. Each sha had its own school with a teacher
I was terribly embarrassed, but I had to tell them that
called the shashi. The shashi’s role in the village
Japan hardly had any reservoirs either. The Ministry of
corresponded to that of the shaman of the Amazon; it was
Agricul- ture, Fisheries and Forestry had a horrible policy
his job to pass all the wisdom, customs, and medical
of going out to prefectures that still had some reservoirs
knowledge of that village down to the younger
and wan- tonly destroying them – they called it their
generation. With all this in mind, I settled on the word
campaign to stamp out reservoirs. The widespread use of
nosha with the idea of turning this into the basic unit of
reservoir irri- gation was one of the reasons that
agricultural activity. But turning that idea into a reality
agricultural productivity was quite high in Japan by the
has been no easy task and is still continuing.
end of the Edo period. The impact of these reservoirs was
particularly strong in Sanuki, northern Shikoku. The most important thing for the nosha is the forest. It
sustains the life of the entire village. When the 1997
Reservoirs offer just one example of the importance of
Kyoto protocol was in the process of being formulated,
maintaining the social common capital of the natural
we econo- mists gathered and discussed how we should
envi- ronment as common property. The truth is that I
respond at the coming COP3 meeting in Kyoto. The great
served for some time as a mediator in the land dispute that
teacher of mine, Kenneth Arrow, organized a large study
arose over the construction of Narita airport. I believe it
group, and in 1994, everyone gathered to share their
was in the summer of 1990 when the alliance of local
research at a big meeting in Nairobi. At the time the
farmers and others opposing the airport’s construction
keynote lecture was by a re- searcher at a major Canadian
and expansion came to me and asked for help. At first I
think tank set up by an inter- national Christian
thought they wanted me to lead the charge for the anti-
organization to study climate change, forests, and other
airport group, but it turned out they wanted me to mediate
global environmental issues. The subject of the address
between them and the Ministry of Transport. I was involved
was the world’s forests, and the speaker’s main point was
in that process for almost 10 years.
that the biggest problem stemmed from the modern
The last phase was particularly difficult, but thanks in
rationalism that began with philosophers like Descartes
part to the resolve of the government at that time, a settle-
and Bacon – that is, the arrogant notion that man can
ment was finally negotiated. Still, it seemed to me that from
conquer and control nature by understanding it from a
the protesters’ standpoint, it was really no solution at all.
purely mechanical perspective. The speaker argued that this
The fact is that over the years about 100 young people,
attitude was the major cause of all the global environmental
students who had allied themselves with the farmers in
problems facing the world today, including the loss of
the Narita dispute, came to live among the farmers and
biodiversity and the destruction of the tropical rainforests,
adopted their way of life. These aren’t the members of any
and he contended that at the bottom of that attitude was
radical faction. However, a substantial number of the
Christianity. It was really a bombshell of a paper in the
University of Tokyo students who were drawn to Narita
sense that it rejected the kind of thinking on which econom-
in the wake of the university unrest of the early 1960s
ics itself is based.
were so impressed
I was sitting right next to Arrow, who was chairing the
conference. After listening to the paper, he remarked that
the thesis suggested that there was nothing more econo-
 2
mists could do, and that was how the meeting ended. As a
result, our group contributed very little to COP3. Instead,
that paper provided the impetus for economists concerned
with the environment to fundamentally rethink their ap-
proach. It spurred us to begin approaching forests and
other environmental social common capital in terms of
how to manage something sacred – to try to
understand them and the problems associated with them
in terms of the dispensation of nature instead of trying to
conquer and control.
The forests are the most important of these sacred
entities. It is wrong to dispose of them for profit or for the
state to put them under the management of its govern-
mental apparatus. We must treat them with great care and
respect, as precious common property. This is the most
fundamental idea underlying the concept of social
common capital. We are witnessing the birth of a new
current in humankind’s approach not only to forests but to
the envi- ronment in general, as well as to such important
social systems as education and medicine – to manage
them with care and respect from the vantage point of
social common capital.
From this standpoint, I remain profoundly grateful that
Tessa Morris-Suzuki included me in her survey of Japanese
economic thought shortly after I first proposed the
concept of social common capital. In fact, when President
Suzuki spoke to me about giving a lecture at this event, I
didn’t feel that I could presume to display my amateur’s
knowledge of the field in front of experts such as you, but
in the end I decided to deliver this talk, however
inadequate, as a token of thanks to his sister-in-law, Tessa
Morris-Suzuki.
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