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The story
It has come to light that roughly 6,000 copper plates covering the roofs of the main hall and the adjoining Kotowachi Shrine (事麻知神社) at Hakusan Shrine in Tenryu Ward, Hamamatsu City, Shizuoka Prefecture were stolen, with damages exceeding ¥20 million. The theft was discovered on August 25 when those involved with the shrine visited for the first time in about a month, and it was reported to police. On 5ch’s Breaking News+ thread, commenters called for tighter monitoring and regulation of scrap metal buyers, pointed to a similar case of copper plate theft from a temple in the Noto Peninsula earthquake disaster zone, and repeatedly voiced frustration that metal theft cases so often end without indictment.
It has been revealed that about 6,000 copper plates, worth roughly ¥20 million, were stolen from the roof of a shrine in Tenryu Ward, Hamamatsu City.
The copper plates were stolen from Hakusan Shrine in Sejiri, Ryuzan-cho, Tenryu Ward. On August 25, those involved with the shrine noticed the theft when they visited for the first time in about a month and reported it to police.
According to the chief priest, the stolen items were a total of 6,000 copper plates covering the roofs of the main hall and the adjoining Kotowachi Shrine, with damages amounting to more than ¥20 million.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Those guys won't lift a finger without an official complaint filed.
Exactly this.
The current criminal code is way too vague and can't keep up with how vicious these crimes have gotten.
God: 'I wonder about the buyers, though?'
Maybe Japan's still better off, since at least our railways and phone lines haven't been hit yet.
Nah, it happened plenty back then too.
Apparently right after the war there were cases of national railway wire theft, but it wasn't as frequent as it is now.
AC outdoor unit theft is probably a recent thing, once metal prices spiked?
Never heard of crop theft being a thing back then, though.
https://www.fnn.jp/articles/-/1096896
In this case, police built cases for 45 offenses total, but prosecutors declined to indict on 44 of them, citing 'consideration of various circumstances.'
About 500 pieces of metal were stolen, with total damages estimated at around ¥32 million.
When there are lots of related offenses, it's standard practice to only pursue the one case that's easiest to prove.
That's a brazenly easy crime to pull off!
Looking at the map, it's a single road in and out,
so they probably posted a lookout down below.
Still, seems like they'd leave some kind of trail eventually though.
The grunts who did the actual hauling are small fry compared to whoever's really behind this.
Background and Points of Debate
Copper has become a prime target for metal theft amid soaring international prices, and there was in fact a real case in which copper plates and other metal were stolen from a temple in the Noto Peninsula earthquake disaster zone, with total damages reaching roughly ¥32 million. In the thread, some argued that this surge in metal theft is a distinctly recent phenomenon, while others pushed back, pointing to past incidents like the theft of national railway wire after the war — so commenters don’t fully agree on whether the cause can be reduced to a single explanation. There was also repeated frustration over how often suspects are caught but never indicted, though it should be noted that indictment decisions hinge on the specifics of each case, making it hard to generalize from the information in this article alone.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Breaking News+) thread “[Shizuoka] ‘Trampling on a place where the gods are enshrined’ — Who did it? 6,000 copper plates stolen from a shrine, damages over ¥20 million… Hamamatsu’s Hakusan Shrine.”
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