One feature of forestry is the relative ignorance of foresters about what they are growing. This is often reinforced by lack of market interest and utilisation experience. This book intends to bridge these gaps of knowledge. Triggered by the author's economic analyses in the late 1960s, New Zealand forestry policy changed from 25 per cent of production for export to over 70 per cent. At the same time the Establishment had rejected the silvicultural approach the author had evolved which questioned certain fundamentals of conventional forestry. At that time, Japan had been taking up to 25 per cent of New Zealand's total log production, but there was no real understanding of the Japanese market. To study this in-depth, the author spent three years in Japan. The book contains the valuable research born out of his field work there, covering the marketing as well as the silviculture, sawnwood-grades and economic sides of plantation forestry. The book also included almost 40 photographs taken by the author on the various forest species in Japan. TARGET AUDIENCE: Policy makers, researchers, tertiary students, civil servants, local government officials and all those interested in silviculture, Japanese forestry and timber industry.