part of an effort to provide ever more data for the project. In addition
to its government-funded studies and dozens of special trails, a small
number of physicians in Japan have been certified in forest medicine.
It’s hard to overstate how unusual this is.
“The Japanese work is essential in my mind, a Rosetta stone,”
Alan Logan, a Harvard lecturer, naturopath and member of the
scientific committee of the International Society of Nature and Forest
Medicine (which is, naturally, based in Japan), had told me. “We have
to validate the ideas scientifically through stress physiology or we’re
still at Walden Pond.”
The Japanese have good reason to study how to unwind: In
addition to those long workdays, pressure and competition for schools
and jobs help drive the third-highest suicide rate in the world (after
South Korea and Hungary). One-fifth of Japan’s residents live in
greater Tokyo, and 8.7 million people have to ride the metro every
day. Rush hour is so crowded that white-gloved workers help shove
people onto the trains, leading to another unique term, tsukin jigoku—
commuting hell.
THE CIRCUMSCRIBED, urban life is of course not unique to Japan. I now
reflected the nature-deprived trends myself. I spend too much time
sitting inside. I maintain multiple social-media platforms that
attenuate my ability to focus, think and self-reflect. Since moving to
D.C., I’ve had crying jags in traffic jams, and at times I’ve been so
tired I’ve had to pull over and nap on MacArthur Boulevard. When I
do get out “in the woods,” I seem to be doing it all wrong, forgetting
or unable to hear the birds or notice any dappled anything. Instead, I
grumble and obsess over my fate, my relationships and my kids’ new
schedules, which require military precision and Euclidean traffic
calculations.
A couple of months after I moved, I told my new doctor I was
feeling depressed. She did what general practitioners everywhere are