Why Akita's Forest Doesn't Look Like Japan: Postwar Cedar Plantations

At the 2026 GeoGuessr World Championship, a single road through what looked like a Japanese mountain forest came up. On screen: trees, trees, a gravel road, more trees.

When the clip spread among Japanese viewers, the reaction was "Wait, is this really Japan?" Even someone who lives in Akita Prefecture replied, "Hmm, Switzerland!" The forest didn't look like Japan even to Japanese people.

People who know forestry saw something else, though.

Conifers in neat rows. Looks like a plantation. The tree shape says sugi (Japanese cedar). Combine the terrain and the logging road and it feels like the Tohoku region.

From here the story stops being about GeoGuessr and turns into Japan's postwar history.

Here's the short version: that scenery looks foreign not because someone imported mysterious foreign cedars by the thousands. It's more accurate to say native Japanese cedar was planted by people at the same age and spacing over a huge area, so the forest ended up looking more like a "generic commercial conifer forest found anywhere in the world" than like a messy, locally unique one.

And Akita's scale is enormous.

1. Akita doesn't just have "a lot of forest"

Akita Prefecture covers about 1.16 million hectares. About 840,000 hectares of that is forest, so roughly 72% of the prefecture is forest. According to the prefecture's official school reader, about half of that forest is planted, and most of the planted forest is cedar. [3][4]

Cedar plantations alone cover about 360,000 hectares, the largest of any prefecture in Japan. [3]

Simple math: 360,000 divided by 1.16 million means about 30% of Akita is cedar plantation. The statistics aren't all from the same year, so treat it as a rough figure, but it shows that a good part of what looks like "green from above" is forest that people planted and tended.

That raises a silly question: "Is Akita's famous beauty a forest?"

Of course, the famous "Akita bijin" (Akita beauties) are people. But judging by satellite images and forest statistics, forest takes up a very large share of Akita's screen time.

2. Does it look un-Japanese because the cedars are foreign?

No.

Japan's Forestry Agency describes the cedar that was widely planted after the war as a native Japanese species. [7] Akita has long had natural Akita cedar, and a Tohoku Regional Forest Office document says its use goes back to ancient times. [5]

So it's not

import mysterious foreign cedar → Akita turns into Switzerland.

It's closer to

Japanese trees, lined up by Japanese people like industrial products → the result looks less regional.

In a natural forest, species, thickness, height, age and spacing vary much more. In plantations, the aim is timber, so the same species is often planted at the same time at regular intervals. From a distance, you get "uniform conifers plus a work road."

This look isn't unique to Japan. Commercial forests in Europe and North America have a similar structure. So even if the species is purely Japanese, once the design philosophy of the forest becomes universal, the scenery loses its nationality.

3. You think it's wild nature, but it's a giant production facility

Akita Prefecture explains that forest roads exist for hauling timber and managing the forest. Some forestry-only roads are simple ones, built so that something like a 10-ton truck can run on them. [3]

So what you see in GeoGuessr,

🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲 gravel road 🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲

isn't necessarily an untouched wilderness with no one around. It can also be a huge outdoor production facility for growing, tending and hauling out timber.

A factory shows you buildings and aisles. A plantation shows you rows of trees and a forest road.

When you see it in Google Street View, the factory feeling disappears and you get "Is this really Japan?" That's the fun part.

Street View also includes both images shot by Google and images contributed by users. Google itself has shot not only from cars but also with a backpack-mounted Trekker, pickups, snowmobiles and motorcycles. [10] So you can't assume a particular mountain-road image was taken by a regular Google car. Still, the reaction of "why is there 360-degree imagery even on a road like this?" is fair.

4. Why did Japan plant so much? After the war, there really weren't enough trees

From today's view it's "that's too much planting," end of story, but people at the time had their reasons.

During and after the war, Japan needed huge amounts of timber, and forests were cut heavily. After the war, demand for timber was strong for rebuilding cities, housing, construction, and paper and pulp. According to the Forestry Agency, there was a period in the 1950s and early 1960s (the Showa 30s) when artificial afforestation reached about 400,000 hectares per year. [6]

So "expansion afforestation," planting cedar and cypress, which grow relatively fast and are valuable as building material, moved ahead. [6][7]

Akita followed the same path. The Tohoku Regional Forest Office explains that clear-cutting and expansion afforestation turned natural Akita cedar forests into planted cedar forests, and that the standing volume of natural Akita cedar fell from about 10 million m3 around 1955 to under 5 million m3 in the early 1965 to 1970 period. [5]

From the mindset of the time:

Government: "We're short on wood!" Forestry: "It takes decades to grow." Government: "Then plant a huge amount right now!"

The problem was that the lead time for investing in a forest is far too long.

5. By the time the trees were ready, the market was a different place

Trees aren't an app. You can't say "demand changed, so we'll push an update next week."

Trees planted in the 1950s and 60s took decades to become real timber. During that time, Japan expanded and liberalized timber imports, and imported wood came to support much of demand. Fuel shifted from firewood and charcoal to oil and gas, and the way people used the satoyama (the managed woodlands near villages) changed as well. [6]

So "the population shrank and nobody uses the wood anymore, so it's all surplus" is not a full explanation.

The real issue is a 50-year demand forecasting problem:

1. Postwar reconstruction leaves timber in short supply.
2. Large plantations are created in anticipation of future needs.
3. During the decades the trees grow, imported wood, energy, construction and industry all change.
4. The profitability of forestry and the workforce change too.
5. Even so, the trees keep growing on schedule.

A batch job launched in the Showa era has sent its completion notice in the Reiwa era.

6. And the cedar delivered pollen as well as timber

Now the modern nose joins in.

According to the Forestry Agency, cedar releases much more pollen from about age 20 onward. Japan currently has about 10 million hectares of plantations, and about 40% of that, around 4.41 million hectares, is cedar forest. [7]

So the large cedar forests planted after the war as "future timber" took on a second function as pollen sources as they grew.

This doesn't mean people back then were plotting to give future generations hay fever. Responding to the timber shortage and devastated land made sense. But a very long-term policy delivers its side effects decades late, too.

1950s: deploy the seedlings Decades later: the timber resource is complete At the same time: a notification to your nose

The lead time is just too long.

7. But these aren't "cedar mountains nobody uses"

This matters too.

About 60% of Japan's planted forests are now over 51 years old, and the Forestry Agency calls this the "full-scale usage period." Domestic timber supply is rising, and Japan's timber self-sufficiency rate recovered to 42.5% in 2024. [8]

So dismissing the planting policy as "all a waste" would be inaccurate.

The real challenge now is how to use the trees that have grown, and what to do after they're cut.

According to the Forestry Agency, new planting has hovered around 30,000 hectares per year, and replanting after final felling isn't going well enough. The reasons given include timber prices, replanting costs and a shrinking forestry workforce. [9]

In the old days, "plant!" was the hard part.

Now the whole loop has to run:

cut → sell → plant again → secure workers → make the numbers work

It's a subscription renewal for forests, with a contract term of several decades.

8. Now the government is cutting back the pollen-producing cedar

The government has set a goal of reducing cedar plantations, which are pollen sources, by about 20% by fiscal 2033. The plan combines felling and replanting, expanding demand for cedar timber, increasing production of low-pollen seedlings, and improving forestry productivity and labor supply. [11]

There is also a longer-term goal of halving the amount of pollen released. [11]

History in one line:

Showa: Plant cedar! Reiwa: Cut down the pollen-producing cedar!

From the cedar's point of view, it's a complete spec change by the humans.

But "cut everything and the problem is solved" is not the answer. Forests also provide water storage, landslide prevention, carbon absorption, biodiversity and more. Where forestry makes sense, you keep the cycle of felling and replanting going; on harsh sites, you might steer plantations toward mixed forests with broadleaf trees. The design has to change from place to place. [8][9]

9. What GeoGuessr showed wasn't just "nature," but Showa-era policy

Back to the original clip.

The forest that made Japanese viewers think "Switzerland?" is not just mountain scenery.

Cedar, a native Japanese tree. Wartime and postwar logging. Timber shortage in the rebuilding years. Expansion afforestation. Forest road construction. Competition with imported wood. Decades of forest growth. The pollen problem. The replanting problem.

All of it was compressed into one forest road lined with evenly spaced trees.

No wonder strong GeoGuessr players can look at "species," "planting pattern," "terrain" and "road standard" and narrow it down to Japan or Tohoku. They look like they're guessing a landscape, but they're really reading a fossil of land-use policy.

And an ordinary Japanese person just thinks:

"Nothing but trees. Europe, maybe?"

When even a person living in Akita called it Switzerland, who can blame them?

Here's the final answer to the "Is Akita's famous beauty a forest?" joke:

It's people. But what takes over Akita's screen is mostly forest. And a large part of that forest was designed by humans decades ago.

You approach what you think is great nature, and it turns out to be a huge Showa-era project.

And that project is still producing timber, pollen and GeoGuessr puzzles all at once.

Sources

1. GeoGuessr — World Championship 2026
2. Yahoo! Realtime Search — Posts about GeoGuessr World Championship 2026 Day 2
3. Akita Prefecture — Reader "Akita's Forests" (14th revised edition)
4. Akita Prefecture — Akita Forestry Statistics
5. Tohoku Regional Forest Office — Learning from the history of natural Akita cedar: protection and conservation
6. Forestry Agency — Showa 100 / History of forests and forestry
7. Forestry Agency — Pollen source countermeasures Q&A
8. Forestry Agency — Recycling forest resources and the usage period of planted forests
9. Forestry Agency — Promoting reforestation
10. Google Maps — How Street View works
11. Forestry Agency — Pollen source countermeasures

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