Kyoto green onion theft victim becomes Kyoto green onion thief

Prosecutors seeking jail time for theft of hundreds of kilos of Kujo negi.

Many a philosophical mind has lamented the sad phenomenon of how so often violence begets violence. Physical violence isn’t the only destructive, ill-advised behavior for which such patterns hold true, however, as in Kyoto Prefecture an example of green onion theft begetting green onion theft has occurred.

Last Thursday, Kyoto district court judge Tomoko Yamaguchi presided over the case of a 28-year-old man charged with theft. According to prosecutors, between the morning of August 30 and the evening of September 1, the man stole roughly 216 kilograms (476 pounds) of green onions from farmers’ fields in the town of Kuiyama, Kyoto Prefecture. Specifically, the man stole Kujo negi, an heirloom variety of green onion grown in the Kyoto area.

While Kujo negi are considered to be an especially delicious kind of green onion, they’re not exactly, say, the  Kobe beef of the vegetable world. The man’s 216-kilo haul of stolen goods has an estimated value of around 190,000 yen (approximately US$1,240), so it wasn’t like this one big score was going to bring him enough ill-gotten dough to retire on a private island.

So why did he decide to steal Kujo negi specifically? Because the man himself was a farmer who grew green onions. Or, rather, he tried to grow green onions, but wasn’t very successful at it. The man had started his own independent farm back in January, but the high heat of this past summer, he claims, resulted in low yields, and he wasn’t growing enough to supply his clients with the total 800 kilograms per week of green onions they had agreed on. The man says that he was worried about losing customers, which would put him in an especially bad spot financially since he had “gambled away and otherwise wasted” much of the money he’d had.

So to make up the slack in his deliveries, the man decided to steal Kujo negi from other farmers, harvesting them straight out of the owners’ fields. The man says he’d gotten the idea to do so after being the victim of crop theft himself. “I had about 200 to 300 kilograms of green onions stolen from my fields back around July, so I arrived at the improper way of thinking that ‘The quickest solution would be to steal other people’s crops too.’”

However, as we all learned as kids, two wrongs don’t make a right, and the man, who has admitted to the charges, now has to hope that the court will be lenient in his sentencing. His defense lawyer is asking for a suspended sentence, which would mean no jail time as long as the many stays out of any other trouble with the law, and in his argument cited the man’s intent to compensate the farmers’ he stole the green onions from for their losses. However, referring to that as his “intent” suggests that he’s yet to actually pay them back, and the prosecution, in calling the man’s actions “a selfish crime with only his personal profit in mind,” is asking for two years in prison when the man is sentenced on December 19. However things shake out, though, hopefully this will put a stop to the cycle of green onion theft.

Source: Kyoto Shimbun via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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