A lacquer tree is tapped for one season and then felled. Jōbōji produces domestic urushi, and the association here accounts for something like eighty per cent of the Japanese-grown lacquer used in the country. More than forty tappers work each season, and the number is counted because it matters: there is no way to increase output without increasing them. Iwate's production in the 2021 financial year was 1,672 kilograms — a figure small enough to write out, for a material an entire craft depends on.

Each tree yields one season's worth, and when the tapping is finished the tree is cut down, so the interval before a replacement can be tapped is fifteen to twenty years. The urushi woodland within Ninohe covers 144 hectares and holds about 140,000 trees, which is not scenery but inventory held for a later generation. The district carries both a protected geographical indication and its own Jōbōji urushi certification scheme, so the name is defended twice over — which matters when a material this scarce commands the price it does.

Work with a fifteen-year lag is not planted for the benefit of the person planting. The people who put the trees in and the people who will tap them belong to different generations, which means that counting hectares and stems is the only way to make a promise about future output — and the promise is made to somebody who is not yet working. The figure of 144 hectares is therefore a statement about production two decades from now, made by people who will mostly not be there to see it honoured. It is one of the few industries where the accounts have to be read forward rather than backward.