Chapter III. Collecting Ishizuchi Shimpaku
At the beginning of their popularity, Shimpaku were everywhere in the Ishizuchi
mountain range and one did not need many tools. Many Shimpaku could be found
and were easily dug up. As the demand for Shimpaku heightened, excessive
collecting began to occur. At the time, there were no restrictions on taking
plants from the mountains, and collectors from all over Shikoku went into
the mountains in droves. They included not only the professional mountain
hunters but also those people with a taste for bonsai and even ordinary
people seeking a quick profit. As a result, in only 20 years the Ishizuchi
Shimpaku in their natural state were virtually extinct. They even began
to take the trees left in the rear mountain area of Besshi and those left
growing on the cliffs.
Shimpaku bonsai of Meiji period
The collectors went to the mountains in pairs. Each person took two thin ropes and two thick ropes, and a special pickaxe illustrated here. The pickaxe is a very functional instrument, but it could prove to be a dangerous tool in unskilled hands. First, one of them -- the hunter -- would tie a rope around a tree at the top of a cliff and then climb down using the rope as a life-line. The other person -- the spotter -- would look down the cliff with a pair of binoculars to see if he could find a favorable Shimpaku. Once sighting a good specimen, the spotter would inform the hunter by waiving a red flag. According to the spotter's instructions, the hunter would use his pickaxe to help him move about on the wall of the cliff. Sometimes the hunter would swing his body into the air away from the wall to reach a distant corner of the cliff face. This activity was very dangerous, for if the rope snapped, it could be the end of the hunter’s life. Upon reaching the right tree, the hunter would break apart any impeding rocks, uncover the tree roots, and by using the edge of the pickaxe proceed to cut the roots to release the tree.
During the period 1903-1908, there were reportedly accidents in which both the spotter and hunter would slide down the face of the cliff, one after another. Most of these victims were either miners from the Besshi copper mine, employees of wealthy merchants or others who were not bonsai professionals.
In the first decade of the 1900s, Ishizuchi Shimpaku was priced from ¥200 to ¥1,000. Today, that would translate to a value of several million yen to tens of millions of yen. (Today, one million yen would equal about US$10,000.) It was natural to lose one’s sanity because of the Shimpaku's high value. But, there were also collectors who appreciated bonsai and did not sell their collected Shimpaku but kept them for themselves. Thus, there were countless wonderful specimens which could be found in the residences of ordinary people in Takamatsu, Niihama, Saijyou and Imabari.
Although Kuransouke Fujita of Niihama, Tahei Suzuki of Doi and so forth were known as the famous professional hunters, there were countless semiprofessionals doing business with local persons having a taste for bonsai or with large-scale merchants in Takamatsu. However, toward the end of the Meiji era (1912) when Ishizuchi Shimpaku became exhausted, some people sought out Korean Shimpaku for resale by crossing the sea. Thus, around 1908, almost all the Shimpaku sold around Takamatsu included Korean specimens. However, these Korean junipers were called "Shikoku" Shimpaku because their quality was so good and could hardly be differentiated from Shikoku Shimpaku. People then spread specimens to Kyushu, Yamato, Kishu, Koushu, and so on. When the news went out that collected Shimpaku were available, the collector-dealers of Shikoku would be the first to arrive. Some of these collector-dealers also journeyed out to look for any unknown new area where the Shimpaku might be still growing in the wild. This group of collector-dealers knew the value of Shimpaku and had acquired the knowledge to collect the specimens.
Mountain collecting is similar to hunting. Once having acquired a taste for it, people might never have been able to return to stable jobs such as farming, nor be able to become a merchant. They would find themselves longing to wander in search of prey. As for Shimpaku junipers, by the early 1900s trying to collect them by climbing aimlessly among the mountains was like trying to grab clouds. By that time, there was almost no possibility of finding any Shimpaku growing in the wild. But, there was one man who possessed extraordinarily good luck.