Is it true that Japan bought broken glass in the USSR for wooden boxes?

According to several publications on the Internet, Japan exported glass fragments from the Soviet Union to subsequently make furniture from wooden containers. We checked if there is evidence of this story.

The materials common on the Internet describe the unusual trading scheme between Japan and the USSR: supposedly an Asian country purchased tons of broken glass in the Soviet Union, which were then dumped into the sea, and the real purpose of the transaction was to receive containers - boxes made of quality wood that were sent to Japanese furniture factories. Such publications can be found, in particular, on the website about design and technology Novate.ru, portal Rambler Weekend And the resource "Reporter". Published at the end of May 2021 on YouTube a video of this unusual deal for two and a little month Sicked Almost 1 million views. Users of social networks did not deprive such publications - posts in "VKontakte" And Facebook Tens and hundreds of likes are typed.

The search for the primary source of this story led us not to an international trade agreement or a serious academic study, but to the Pikabu website. In February 2014, Allen user wrote: “One day, my father told me one funny story. Japan massively purchased broken glass from the Union. For what? To make furniture (yes, furniture). In general, the scheme is this: the USSR sends tons of broken glass to Japan in high -quality wooden boxes, and cunning Japanese glass throw it into the sea (or where else), and they make furniture from the boxes and sent back to the USSR. Such things. " Other users of the platform in the comments were divided into those who expressed doubt about the authenticity of the statements made, and those who began to give similar plots. In particular, the commentators on Pikabu talked about Soviet machines that the Japanese bought and then melted to the cars, that the real purpose was not boxes, but nails (they were also directed for remelting), or the purchase of shovels - the metal part, as you probably guessed, allegedly re -melted, and the wooden was sent to woodworking enterprises.

For about four years, judging by the search results on the Internet, the story of the sale of broken glass in Japan was practically not interested in anyone. But in mid -August 2018, several sites wrote about her with an interval of several days, and then users of social networks picked up the topic. I launched this wave, apparently, the Anews resource - there is a publication appeared Previously of other sites, August 7. Note that in this case, the narrative is somewhat different from the Pikabu set by the user. A fragment about the purchase of broken glass itself was called a “legend”, which many people from the USSR “remembered for a long time” and “remembered for a long time,” and the explanation of the boxes to represent almost a serious discovery. Many publications that appeared over the next few days, either literally or largely coincided with the stated Anews. In subsequent years, this story from time to time again surfaced on some Internet resources and social networks, but in the chronological sense not so concentrated. Note that they do not tell about unusual trade in any authoritative source either in Russian or in English.

And in the case of the original publication on Pikabu, and in the case of subsequent retelling to the media in history about the tricky plan of Japanese furniture producers, there are practically no specifics. From these texts we cannot find out when such deliveries were passed, what were their volumes, by what logistics chain the fragments were delivered, on the basis of which agreements or agreements were sold, which furniture factory processed boxes, etc. Often a significant lack of details indicates that we are doing either very distorted or completely fictional information.

Despite the explicit drawback of hooks, we will try to assess the likelihood of the events checked. To begin with, in the second half of the 20th century, the USSR was one of the largest wood suppliers to Japan - the country's economy developed violently after the Second World War, and its own resources Not enough. According to the official Japanese statisticssince 1961, the USSR delivered to the country at least 1 million m³ wood annually. Deliveries reached a peak in 1973 (more than 9 million m³), then, due to the crisis, they began to gradually decline, but even by the beginning of the 1990s they exceeded 4 million m³. It is unlikely that in such a situation, the Japanese for some reason needed a difficult scheme for the purchase of wooden boxes.

The explanation of how the received boards planned to be used is no less suspicious. As follows from the audited publications, the Japanese made furniture from them, but the data from the country of the rising sun is refuted. For the production of furniture, the Japanese preferred North American wood, while the Soviet was used mainly in construction and processed into packaging materials. How asserted The analyst of Hiroaki Kakizawa, this was due to the fact that Soviet exporters did not always comply with the terms of the contract - supplied boards or trunks of not the sizes and forms that were needed, or completely sent the recipients the materials of insufficiently good quality.

According to the authors of publications that have appeared on the Internet since 2018, the Japanese allegedly caused not just boxes, but the material from which they were made was a cedar. Let us leave aside the question of how justified to make a container to transport broken glasses from such valuable wood, and turn to the history of the Soviet forest industry. Since the late 1950s in the USSR, cutting of cedar pines has been seriously limited, and by 1989-practically Forbidden. These trees are much more active used in the workpiece of cedar nuts than in the manufacturing industry.

Summing up, we evaluate the verified messages as extremely implausible. The cunning scheme for the purchase of broken glass (and actually wooden boxes) from the USSR is not reported in authoritative sources and scientific research. The written fixation of this story occurred only a few years ago - it is suspicious that no one talked about it either in Soviet times or for two and a half decades after the collapse of the USSR. Finally, the validity of such a deal causes serious doubts - the Soviet Union and so delivered a lot of wood to the Japanese for several decades.

Most likely not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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