This review evaluated Japanese forest management from a viewpoint of Sustainable Forest Management (SFM).Furthermore three types of forest; private, state, and communal forest were analyzed from physical and financialaspect.The outcome of this research suggests that all types of forest can not achieve SFM. For private forest, the num-bers of individual forest owners who are engaged in management of forest have been decreased. Therefore forestarea which need proper management increased. Moreover the Forestry Agency which manages state forest does nothave the sufficient ability to control forest due to heavy debt burden. The numbers of forest cooperatives that man-age the communal forest and sell the timber have been decreasing. The seriousness of the problem to manage Japanese forest is that, no matter what type of property regimes orwhat purpose of management, forest is managed by commercial forestry. To meet with the diverse public needs forforest resources, its need to choose specific property regimes for particular resource utilization to achieve particularsocial purpose. However, traditional property regimes have limitations. In the last section, we examined the “mod-ern communal management" which is a new concept of participatory management by forest owner and NPO (NonProfit Organization) or VO (Voluntary Organization).