Today 43% of Japan's population has moderate or severe symptoms of pollen allergy. For comparison, the UK figure is 26%, in the US it's between 12 and 18%. How did Japan become the most allergic country in the world? Not because of pollution. Because of one state project from the 1950s, built with the best intentions - and without thinking about the consequences.

After the Second World War, Japan was left without large stretches of natural forest. The war had consumed them - wood was the only available fuel. Around Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe, mountains were completely bare. The result: landslides, floods, erosion. The authorities had to react fast.

The decision was to plant two native fast-growing species: the Japanese cedar "sugi" and the Japanese cypress "hinoki". Today those plantations cover 10 million hectares - a fifth of Japan's entire territory. And those plantations are the source of the pollen that paralyses the industrial power of the nation every spring.

Economic damage: 1.6 billion dollars a day at the peak of the season - lost workdays, reduced consumption, medication. That's more than the entire annual budget of all of North Macedonia, every day, for a month. The allergies also cause sleep problems, reduced concentration, higher risk of asthma.

What's being done now? The Japanese government in 2023 declared allergies a national health problem. The target: 50% reduction in pollen over 30 years. Local communities have begun converting plantations back into natural forest. The city of Kobe plans to convert 180 hectares of monoculture into deciduous forest over 15 years. Researchers are building precise forecasts, robots that measure airborne concentration, even genetically modified rice that could help.

For a Balkan reader - whose region has its own analogous stories (mining tailings, rivers drained by hydroelectric plants, village erosion from agricultural monoculture) - this is a lesson in the cost of the fast fix. Japan built those plantations with the best intentions. Now it will spend 30 years undoing them, and during that time pay 1.6 billion dollars a day. The same trend we see in the Balkans with granite quarries, with short-circuit roads, with construction without a plan - the problem isn't in the immediate fix. The problem is in the moment when nobody asked what happens in 50 years.