150 Years of Transition Design — Reading the Forest of Meiji Shrine

The forest of Meiji Shrine is an artificial forest designed 100 years ago by three experts in forestry, landscape architecture, and plant ecology, with a 150-year vision. They designed not a finished landscape but the process of change itself — this book calls it "transition design."

Against the convention of "shrine forest = cedar and cypress," they chose evergreen broadleaf trees based on Tokyo's climate, soil, and pollution data. They organized 100,000 donated trees from across Japan and 110,000 youth volunteers. One hundred years later: 365 species and 120,000 trees became 234 species and 36,000 trees. Numbers shrank, but the ecosystem matured with approximately 3,000 documented species.

Reads the four principles — site-fitting, succession design, long-term vision, and social implementation — from this forest's history.