The Japanese government is trying to encourage more developers to use wood. In 2010, it passed the promotion of Use of Wood in Public Buildings Act, which required all government buildings up to threes stories high to be constructed with wood, or to utilise wood.

Sumitomo Forestry says its wooden high-rise, dubbed the W350, will be 350 meters tall and the planned structure will be a mix of mostly wood and steel and it will mark the company's 350th anniversary in 2041.

The 70-storey building, expected to be built it Tokyo, will be made up of of stores, offices, hotels and 8,000 private homes. There will also be balconies and greenery on every level, the company revealed in plans realeased earlier in February.

Sumitomo Forestry, which notes on its website that "happiness grows from trees," said it aimed to create environmentally-friendly, timber-utilising cities which "become forests through increased use of wooden architecture for high-rise buildings."

Building with wood is still not cheap, however. Using 10 percent steel and 185,000 cubic meters of timber, the building is expected to cost around 600 billion Japanese yen (USD5.6 billion) which is twice the amount of a conventional high-rise building constructed with current technology.

However, the company believed that those costs would come down as timber became a more-frequently used material. "Going forward, the economic feasibility of the project will be enhanced by reducing costs through technological development", the company claimed.