A Tokyo Tale: $2 Million Found in Bamboo Grove

The $2-million mystery of the bamboo forest, after playing through the Japanese psyche like a dark subplot to Tokyo’s ongoing political scandal, finally has been solved.

But as so often in Japan, the solution seemed only to deepen the mystery.

It began April 11, when a humble seller of grilled chicken, rooting through an urban bamboo thicket for some tasty shoots, stumbled across a wad of rotting, abandoned yen.

Like any good Japanese, he took the money to the police.

Counting the crumbling bills with some difficulty, they calculated that the 39-year-old restaurateur had picked up the equivalent of $1 million.

The gorudo rashu came next--a gold-rush fever that brought hundreds of money-seekers swarming to the grove in Kawasaki, hoping lightning might strike twice.

And five days later, a humble part-time laborer, 21, who was actually hunting for wild cress, tripped across another $700,000 in yen.

Political Parallel

The frenzy grew, as hundreds more searched for a “third installment.” And the mystery of who would abandon nearly $2 million without even burying it, and then fail to claim the cash when it was found, seemed to obsess the nation, even more than the news of the political scandal shaking the government.

Indeed, many observers saw a connection between easy money flowing through the political world and the mysterious cash of the bamboo forest. It helped headline writers, although not the embattled prime minister, that the first character of Noboru Takeshita’s name means “bamboo”--and that he had received about $2 million from Recruit Co., the conglomerate at the center of the scandal that has forced him to announce his resignation.

But as Japan’s press rushed forward with theory after theory--each more lurid than the last--to explain the unclaimed cache, the dark side of politics was but one rich lode. Mystery writers were interviewed, past murders rehashed, fantastic scenarios constructed around drugs and gangsters, blackmail and tax evasions.

In many ways, the speculation reflected modern Japanese anxieties--fear that unaccustomed prosperity is corrupting morals and dividing rich from poor, old from young.

“The average Japanese cannot play the money game, and when these worlds collide, as they did in the bamboo thicket, public interest is immense,” the newspaper Yomiuri said in an editorial. “It seems that recently the gap between the average citizen and the ultrarich has vastly widened . . . that our society’s view toward money has become very distorted, and this causes great frustration for many Japanese.”

Many experts--and nearly all Japanese depicted themselves as experts on the subject--said the money was somehow connected to soaring land or stock prices that seem to be disrupting Japan’s stable, middle-class society.

Gangster Involvement?

Mystery writer Kyuzo Kobayashi, for example, speculated that someone trying to extricate himself from the shady side of the land business flung the cash away, only to be caught and murdered by gangsters also involved in land profiteering.

Joji Abe, himself a gangster turned mystery writer, speculated that an old man hid the money to cheat his children of their inheritance and then died before he could enjoy it.

While the press speculated and philosophized, police methodically investigated. Paper wrappers around the cash carried dates and the names of several credit unions in the Kawasaki area, outside Tokyo.

Comparing the wrappers with bank records, police eventually focused on the president of a mail-order business, Kasuyasu Noguchi, 46, who had made sizable withdrawals two and three years ago.

Owner Fesses Up

Noguchi recently held a press conference and said, yes, the money belonged to him. Bowing deeply, he apologized to the people of the world for the trouble he had caused.

But Noguchi’s explanation, as provided to reporters and more fully to police, was “beyond comprehension,” Yomiuri said.

Noguchi said he actually had earned the cash in the early 1970s, speculating in stamps and other things. A thief had been stalking his office, he told police, so for years he carried the money in the trunk of his car.

When Japan began printing a new type of cash, Noguchi exchanged the money for new bills--thus the wrappers indicating withdrawals two and three years ago.

But, he said, his desire for the money lessened as friends were murdered or committed suicide in business-related matters.

“My view of life changed,” Noguchi told police.

Feared Tax Audit

He resolved to give the money away, he said, but--acknowledging that he had failed to pay taxes on the income--he feared a tax audit if he donated the money in his own name. So, he said, in October, 1987, he left $2 million in the bamboo grove, hoping someone worthy would find it.

He was “relieved” when someone recovered the money, he said. If he gets it back, he said he will donate it for research into children’s diseases.

Police said they found the explanation puzzling but that they saw no basis for further criminal investigation. Tax authorities said they would investigate, but income earned so long ago would be beyond their reach.

Seiei Sato, the grilled-chicken seller who found the first chunk of cash, said he, too, remained mystified by Noguchi’s account, but might be willing to settle for a 20% finder’s fee and go back to serving yakitori . “It’s troublesome,” he said. “My head is already in a chaotic condition.”

The elderly owner of the bamboo grove said he did not care about the money but he was unhappy that people were taking his bamboo shoots.

And the press and public seemed to be waiting for a sequel to the mystery, or at least another chapter.

“We feel,” the Yomiuri editorial said, “the disappointment we experience when reading a very bad end to a detective story.”