After the liberation, land problems had to be resolved in order to clear colonial remnants and establish modern nations. The main challenge on the land was arable, but the forest problem that was part of the land was serious. The ownership structure and forest policy of Japan made polarization of the ownership structure, and the random deforestation during the war regime led to severe deforestation. This situation continued after liberation. The common people carried out the secret felling for a living to secure fuel and fertilizers, and forest owners, lumbermakers and merchants collaborated with the government offices to accumulate wealth and harvested trees on a large scale.
Under these circumstances, debate on forest reform emerged. Full-scale discussion took place at the Constitutional Assembly, which can be divided into forest nationalization, farmer distribution, and afforestation. The forest nationalization plan was to restore the devastation by eliminating the harmful effects of forest monopoly. The farmers' distribution plan was to distribute the forest as farmland so that farmers could record the forest with ownership. The afforestation plan argued for greening as a solution to the devastation while maintaining the current private system. The positions surrounding forest reform were discussed at the Constitutional Assembly, but as a result, forest reform through the reorganization of ownership structure was frustrated. Afterwards, the direction of forest policy has been based on greening, and as a result, the Forest Protection Temporary Measures Act was created in 1951 as the first legislative proposal.