TOKYO – A business owner in Japan is determined to preserve the domestic charcoal industry, which has experienced a significant decline in production.
Naoyuki Hirose is making efforts to improve the health of forests surrounding small villages, traditional Japanese rural landscapes and mountains, to eventually reduce damage from landslides in the disaster-prone country.
His efforts are also opening sales channels to high-end restaurants, thereby supporting the livelihoods of charcoal makers.
According to government data, the number of people engaged in charcoal production in Japan fell to 1,491 in 2024 from 1,739 in 2020.
The president of Tokyo Nenryo Rinsan Corp., a wholesaler of firewood, charcoal and liquefied petroleum gas, Hirose felt the pinch of the shrinking domestic charcoal market but found a way to revive the sector.
Demand for Japanese charcoal is growing among upscale kaiseki restaurants that serve traditional Japanese multi-course cuisine, the 61-year-old president said at a Tokyo event on the promotion of the use of domestic broadleaf timber in February.
“I want the Japanese charcoal-making business to be profitable, so younger people get attracted to the industry,” he said.
Japanese charcoal is typically more expensive than imported charcoal. But Mitsuhiro Komuro, 60, uses binchotan, premium Japanese charcoal known for its high cooking temperatures and long, smokeless burn, at his kaiseki restaurant in Tokyo.
The charcoal “makes the food fluffy and fragrant. The taste is far better than when using a frying pan,” said Komuro, who cooks ingredients such as tilefish and matsutake mushrooms using the charcoal sourced from Tokyo Nenryo Rinsan.
But the benefits of Japanese charcoal are not even widely known in Japan.
“The only way (to let more people know) is to get people to try it first,” said Tomohiko Nomura, 51, president of a Tokyo Nenryo Rinsan group company in Kumamoto Prefecture.
The unit produces and sells roughly 440 tons of charcoal per year from broadleaf trees in southern Kumamoto Prefecture, which had been used as firewood but were left largely unattended after fossil fuels became the main household fuel in the 1960s.
Proper management helps protect the mountains. The oak trees used as raw material reach maturity in about 30 years. But if left untended and allowed to age, the risk of them contracting a tree disease known as “oak wilt” increases.
According to Nomura, broadleaf trees have deep, extensive root systems that help prevent soil erosion and landslides. During the heavy rain disaster in 2020 that caused the Kuma River, which flows through southern Kumamoto Prefecture, to overflow its banks, landslides were particularly noticeable in coniferous forests.
Katsunori Omoto, a 61-year-old man who runs a charcoal-making company in Iwate Prefecture, signed a contract about 10 years ago under which Tokyo Nenryo Rinsan would purchase his charcoal at fixed prices.
Omoto, who works with his mother, wife and son, said, “Our business stabilized and is no longer at the mercy of market fluctuations.”
Due to an aging society, the number of charcoal makers is declining. Tokyo Nenryo Rinsan’s Hirose has expanded the fixed-price purchasing contract to other producers, helping to secure successors for the industry.