Photo/Illutration Many bonsai trees were stolen from the now-empty stands seen here on May 9 at Gashoen in Mifune, Kumamoto Prefecture. (Kikuma Morikita)

MIFUNE, Kumamoto Prefecture—Thefts of bonsai trees have surged around Japan, leading to tens of millions of yen in losses and fears among infuriated growers that their prized plants are being sold overseas.

“I’m so angry that I want to punch the thieves if they come here again,” said Yusei Sasaki, 26, the third-generation owner of bonsai grower Gashoen in Mifune, Kumamoto Prefecture. “But more than that, I want the trees returned unharmed because bonsai is a work of art that takes time.”

Gashoen, which has been operating for 47 years, reported to police on May 8 that 33 bonsai worth 18.8 million yen ($120,000) in total had been stolen.

Security camera footage showed the theft was carried out between 1:30 a.m. and 2 a.m. that day.

Gashoen has about 500 bonsai items. But the thieves focused on an area near the front door and mainly took bonsai in small pots that could be carried with one hand.

Bonsai in the area where motion sensors activate lights were untouched, Sasaki said.

Size does not dictate value in the world of bonsai.

Some bonsai at Gashoen sprouted over 50 years ago, and the growers have taken painstaking measures to keep them in their original small size.

Sasaki said some of the stolen bonsai are worth nearly 1 million yen each.

One perpetrator in the security camera footage was seen grabbing a tree part from above instead of holding it from below.

Koji Sasaki, 76, founder of Gashoen, said the thief was “an amateur who knows nothing about bonsai.”

The footage also showed the perpetrator passing bonsai over a fence to an accomplice who was apparently giving instructions, including to leave behind inexpensive pots.

According to the Nippon Bonsai Growers Cooperative, at least 30 cases of bonsai theft occurred from 2019 to January 2024. That number includes 20 in the last two months of the period in Aichi, Saitama, Tochigi and Mie prefectures.

One grower was victimized three times.

The Tokyo-based cooperative said an overseas bonsai boom that has continued for more than five years is likely behind the rising number of thefts.

On April 26 this year, Aichi prefectural police announced the arrests of two Vietnamese--a 20-year-old student at a Japanese language school who lives in Nagoya and a 33-year-old construction worker who resides in Togo town in the prefecture.

They were suspected of stealing seven expensive bonsai, including “kuromatsu” black pine, with a total market value of about 5.3 million yen from the property of a self-employed man in Kanagawa Prefecture in mid-March.

Police said they believe the two suspects had repeatedly stolen bonsai trees in Japan and resold them in China and Southeast Asia, where the plants can fetch high prices.

Theft victims say they hope their stolen bonsai remain in Japan because there is a better chance that they will be found and returned.

The Sasakis recalled that about 20 years ago, a Gashoen-grown bonsai worth more than 5 million yen was stolen from a spring plant fair held in Kumamoto city.

The person who bought the stolen bonsai from the thief consulted a bonsai dealer in Osaka about changing the pot.

The dealer analyzed the bonsai branches and thought, “This might have been grown at Gashoen,” according to the Sasakis.

The dealer contacted Gashoen two days later, and the tree was later returned.

“If the bonsai are distributed domestically, there is a chance that they can be found,” Koji Sasaki said.

Yusei Sasaki has posted photos of the stolen bonsai on the company’s Instagram page, asking people to contact him if they see the trees.

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