On the variety show "Kaiun! Nandemo Kanteidan" (TV Tokyo, Tuesdays at 8:54 PM), which aired on April 28, a treasure from the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden (Sakyo Ward, Kyoto City) was appraised at over 100 million yen.
The treasure brought in by an employee of the Kyoto Prefectural Botanical Garden, which is suffering from a serious decline in visitors, is "a legendary book that is said to be almost impossible to find anywhere else in the world." It is a first edition of "Bencao Gangmu," a Chinese herbal medicine text that was created 400 years ago.
"Bencao Gangmu" (Compendium of Materia Medica) is a comprehensive herbal medicine and medical research book written by Li Shizhen, a herbalist of the Ming Dynasty. It contains 1,900 types of herbs, 1,109 illustrations, 1.9 million characters, and spans 52 volumes. In 2011, it was registered as a UNESCO World Memory Heritage site and is widely known in Japan, where it is included in history textbooks.
The requested items were donated by Kotaro Shirai, a botanist from the Taisho era. There are 34 volumes, some of which are multiple volumes bound together in one book. This set includes 46 of the 52 volumes in total, as well as the introductory volume and the illustrated encyclopedia, all in their first edition.
The owner estimated the item's value at 400 years old, saying, "At 10,000 yen a year, that's 4 million yen." However, when an AI appraised it beforehand, it was deemed a fake and valued at 30,000 yen. But MC Koji Imada proudly declared, "Leave it to the appraisal team, who have been doing this for over 30 years!"
The appraisal confirmed it was genuine, and the estimated value was an astonishing 100 million yen! According to Masaji Yagi of the antique bookstore "Azuchido Shoten," there are only eight sets in the world that are almost complete with all 52 volumes, although some volumes are missing. Two sets are in China, one in the United States, and the remaining five are in Japan, and this is one of them. The client was moved to tears by the unexpected result and was excited about the upcoming exhibition.
