How popularity ruins bonsai breeders (6 photos)

In Japan, thefts of bonsai, tiny ornamental trees whose cultivation in Japan dates back centuries, have briefly increased in the last ten years. Loyalty to tradition and aesthetics finally paid off - there were a lot of people wanting bonsai.





This is what the nursery looks like, with barbed wire in the distance

And since beautiful mini-trees cost a lot, they began to steal them, as if it were crazy.

Nurseries and police face entire raids at night, during which masked criminals take out dozens of trees at once.

And for the most part they can’t catch anyone! Police suspect this is a "theft on order" for collectors in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, so the trees are immediately sent out of the country.



The bonsai master is glad that he grew THIS tree, and it can’t be stolen

The art of stealing trees

One of the largest nurseries in Japan is the Gashou-en nursery in Kumamoto Prefecture, where trees have been grown for 50 years.

Last month, 33 bonsai trees were taken away at night, despite all the “traps” for thieves. The nursery was configured to automatically turn on the light when moving, and the most amazing thing was that the criminal went around all the “sensitive” places and moved along the wall. The cameras only caught a couple of shots of three men wearing full-face masks.





They are lined up for buyers to make it easier to steal.

In total, 18.8 million yen worth of trees were stolen. No one was found, the owner of the nursery was inconsolable, because every tree is the brainchild of the owners, because they are sensitive to the shape and aesthetics of plants.

Before this, in March, however, they managed to catch Vietnamese residents at the border who stole bonsai from a collector’s garden in Kanagawa Prefecture worth 5.3 million yen. But that's only because they tried to remove the trees.

If they are sold on the black market within the country, they will never be found and never returned.



This is a bonsai for all bonsai, this is just a bait for thieves

Knowing how to grow bonsai does not mean being smart

In March, fourteen more bonsai were stolen in Kanto - 9 black pine bonsai, 3 Japanese oaks and a maple. And then the police finally woke up and asked nursery owners to STOP geotagging photos of their trees when they show off on the Internet.

Thieves simply arrive at the address that you yourself helpfully provided to them. But it was too late, all the nurseries had been boasting about their work online for ten years and were listed on scammers’ cards.



These are the recordings from cameras at night - even during identification they could not distinguish anyone

If you map bonsai theft crimes, the entire map of Japan will be covered in red dots. Moreover, it is very easy to pretend to be a customer, sign up for a viewing and mark for yourself the location of all the cameras.

The fact is that a certain narrow circle of client connoisseurs wants to install a rare, expensive bonsai. And the damage from the theft of a bonsai is double - not only are the fruits of many years of labor lost, but this client also drops out of the market of official buyers.



Oddly enough, a clumsy bonsai can cost millions of yen

Bonsai breeders become poor not only from thefts, but also from a drop in demand (everything was bought cheaper from thieves). They'll finish the game like this, and all the nurseries will close. Where will they steal then?