We compared the effects of forest harvesting on stream macroinvertebrate communities between Malcolm Knapp Research Forest (MKRF) in Canada and Field Museum Karasawa-yama (FMK) in Japan. 50% of stems were removed by variable retention harvesting in MKRF and strip thinning in FMK. Stream macroinvertebrates in pre- and post-harvesting periods were collected at riffle habitats with a Surber sampler. Regardless of the pre- or post-treatments, Heptageniidae densities (i.e. crawler) in MKRF were 21 times greater than in FMK, while Ephemeridae (i.e. burrower) were dominated in FMK. The differences between streams suggested that FMK is slow-flow habitat compared to MKRF. In the post-treatment, 4 to 12 times increases in Baetidae in both streams were associated with solar radiation and subsequent algae biomass. 3 times increases in Chironomidae in the post treatment compared to the pre treatments only occurred in FMK. This result suggested that sediment supply and accumulations associated with forest harvesting and slow flow in FMK contributed to increases of fine substrate habitat for Chironomidae.