Vol. 2 Nurturing Forests Rich in Sound
This initiative to survey and cultivate forests in order to produce wood for pianos has its eye on keeping Yamaha’s instruments and their music alive 100 years in the future.
The vast forests of Kitami on Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido once constituted a rich natural resource. Seeking to keep Yamaha’s instruments and the music they make around 100 years from now, a member of Yamaha Corporation’s Material Procurement Group walks the forest floor, conducting surveys of the trees. But he has long wondered if there really are no other methods for analyzing large swaths of forest. Today, an industrial-use unmanned helicopter flies above the canopy in Kitami’s skies, rapidly mapping the forest with an onboard laser device.
He professes how there are things you can sense by being on the ground and discover simply by being there instead of racking your brain behind a desk. That is what makes fieldwork very important to him. Feeling the forest yourself is how you learn about the forest, and he hopes to continue pursuing and unlocking its hidden possibilities.
“I really want to go on foot, but it’s just physically impossible with some places. If there was a simpler way to get reliable data, tracking the forest’s resources and the like would be much easier.” So to keep Yamaha’s instruments and their music part of our lives a century later, he continues his work with a helping hand in the sky.
