To harvest more cedar wood in a shorter time and lesser space, ancient Japanese foresters had devised and championed an incredible technique of daisugi: a “giant bonsai” method that dates back to the 15th century. Flexible, dense Kitayama cedar, harvested from the vast mountainous cedar forests of south-central Japan, has been in high demand as a building material for centuries, according to Earth Buddies. The trees grow incredibly straight and tall, without knots. In the 15th century, Kitayama cedar was the favored building material for the houses of the Samurai. As such, Japanese foresters came up with a clever solution to satisfying the demand for cedar wood: daisugi, or literally “platform cedar.” It is a method whereby the mother tree is pruned heavily to form “a giant bonsai” that promotes the growth of straight, spindly shoots, which eventually become more flexible and denser than the original tree. Essentially, daisugi grows trees …