An Intriguing Little-known Investment: Single-Plank Wood (Part 2)
In Part 2 of the dialog between Yuki Sakaguchi, President and CEO of WONDERWOOD Inc., and Kay (Kosuke) Kato, President and Investment Evangelist of WealthPark Lab, Sakaguchi talks about the difference in timelines for furniture in Japan and Europe, the appeal of a single piece of wood as an investment, and the spirit behind WONDERWOOD’s mission, “Back to Nature.”
(Part 1)
Yuki Sakaguchi, CEO, WONDERWOOD Inc., was born in Tottori Prefecture. After graduating from university, he joined P&G Japan Limited, where he worked in sales. Later, he was entranced by a one-piece wooden table in a local café he had just happened to wandered into. In 2016, Sakaguchi launched WONDERWOOD Inc. and introduced single-plank tables and counters to private homes, hotels, and restaurants. Today, guided by its mission of “Back to Nature,” the company manufactures and sells products that give people a sense of nature.
Kay (Kosuke) Kato, President and Investment Evangelist of WealthPark Lab conducts research and disseminates information to “open new investment doors for all.” He has been in his current position since 2021.
Click here for Kosuke Kato’s profile
Putting in place a culture in Japan where furniture gets passed on to the next generation
Kato: It’s so interesting to see how getting to know about single-plank furniture turns into an opportunity to learn about Japan’s long-standing culture nurtured by wood.
Sakaguchi: I’m glad you see it that way because I also want to change the perception of furniture in Japan. Although mass production and mass consumption are the worldwide norms for furniture these days, Europe and other countries still have robust cultures of taking care of and continuing to use furniture that is hundreds of years old. The timeline for looking at furniture is very long.
They say that you can use a one-piece table for as many years as the tree’s age was before it was cut out, so that makes it a piece of furniture you can use for hundreds of years. Horyuji Temple, the world’s oldest wooden structure, was built with cypress trees that were 2,000 years old at the time, and it’s still going strong 1,400 years later. A single-piece table also similarly transcends generations and centuries. I want to put in place a culture in Japan where furniture is passed on to the next generation, so that it continues being used even after the person who purchased it has passed away.
Kato: I think that you never get tired of single-plank furniture because of the simple design of the material itself. And the way it can intertwine family lives from one generation to the next makes it the stuff of dreams.
Sakaguchi: I think single-plank furniture has a positive influence on children from the standpoint of exposing them to something real and teaching them to respect and admire things. Some customers say they want to wait to buy single-plank furniture until their kids are older because they’re worried they’ll scratch or scribble on them, but I feel the opposite way. I believe that exposing children to the real thing at an early age, when they have no experience or prejudice is the quickest way to help them cultivate an eye for quality.
We have a 200-year-old Sakura (cherry) table at home, and once my eldest daughter, who was 2 years old, accidently marked it with a pen she was drawing with, and she started to cry as if she’d hurt a dear friend. She must have been really shocked because she usually called the table “Sakura-chan,” and was attached to it as if it were a person who was hundreds of years older than she was. I told her reassuringly, “Don’t worry. Daddy will work his magic [laughs],” and she looked very happy after I cleaned and restored it to its original state in my workshop. Actually, even if the surface of the wood gets dirty or scratched, you can thinly shave off a few millimeters to make it look like new again. Bringing such an “authentic thing” into your daily life and continually using it while taking care of it can really nurture spiritual richness in a child. I’d love people to use these single-plank boards from when their kids are little.
How do you put a price on something that nature has shaped over thousands of years?
Kato: Now let me ask you about single-plank wood as an asset. I heard that the famous Yakusugi cedar are very expensive.
Sakaguchi: The Yakusugi are cedar trees that have grown on Yakushima Island for over 1,000 years, and due to their rarity, single-plank Yakusugi generally sells at high prices. By the way, the cedars that are younger than 1,000 years old are called Yakukosugi, and even younger ones are called Yakushimasugi. Cedar trees grow all over Japan, and they come in various types, qualities, and prices, making them a popular wood for single planks, but Yakusugi is the highest grade of them all. Since Yakushima Island itself got recognized as a World Heritage site, you can’t cut down Yakusugi anymore, and the only way for new Yakusugi wood to hit the market is when one of them falls due to a natural disaster and has to be cut and removed, so its value is likely to increase going forward. Our customers often request single planks of Yakusugi cedar, but they are not so easy to find although we do our best to look for them.
Kato: How much does a piece of Yakusugi cedar cost?
Sakaguchi: A piece for a table that seats six will get priced in the millions, sometimes tens of millions of yen. But I personally think they should be valued even higher, because even if you could successfully plant and cultivate Yakusugi seeds on Yakushima Island today, it would take over 1,000 years for the trees to be certified as Yakusugi cedar. First of all, Yakushima is a harsh environment for trees to grow in, with rain falling almost 365 days a year and short sunlight hours, which keeps nutrients from getting into the soil. Even if a seed is planted by human hands, the chances of it surviving after 1,000 years are extremely small. The only place in the world where you can find wood with a complexion like that when you cut it from a tree is on Yakushima island in Japan. The currently existing Yakusugi cedar are a truly miraculous works of art that could only be created by Mother Nature.
Millions or even tens of millions of yen may seem like too small a price to pay for the experience of being able to put something that took nature thousands of years to form in a place where you can touch it with your own two hands. I feel that wood should be more highly valued, just as works of art, which are sold for billions of yen in the contemporary art world. In addition to Yakusugi cedars, trees that are hundreds of years old are also unique works of natural art, and when you factor in that the total number of such giant trees will not be growing, I think their scarcity value will increase.
The concept of “Back to Nature” will save the global environment and the people of today
Kato: I see. This is a worldview that has never occurred to me before. It seems that the more people find out about this story, the more the price of a single-plank wood will go up. Also, setting a high price on scarce forest resources through single-plank wood is very meaningful from the perspective of environmental issues. The value that human society attaches to virgin forests itself will change dramatically depending on whether wood cut from forests become furniture worth tens of thousands of yen instead of just wood chips, or whether it becomes a single-plank pieces worth hundreds of times that amount. This increased value will become a huge resource toward protecting forests and the environment. If you want to take on environmental issues in a capitalist society, it makes a lot of sense to try to increase the original value of nature, along with its products. Finally, would you tell us about your company’s mission, “Back to Nature?”
Sakaguchi: These days, people often advocate sustainability and SDGs, but I believe that humans originally were able to coexist with nature without even being conscious of it. Our mission “Back to Nature” expresses the simple idea that we should return to nature because nature is where many answers for living a prosperous and happy life can be found.
I started my own business with single-plank wood because of an event that symbolized “Back to Nature.” After graduating from university, I was working as a sales rep for a major foreign company, and my days were hectic and nerve-wracking. When I returned home to Tottori, exhausted both mentally and physically, I found a table made of a single piece of wood that changed my life. It had a large hole in it, and the moment I put my hand in it, I felt an incredible power. Thanks to the overwhelming presence emanating from this wood, which had survived in a harsh natural environment for hundreds of years, all my earlier worries and pains disappeared. It was then that I also discovered my mission in life: to work to deliver to society single-plank wood that invigorates people.
Kato: “Back to Nature” is a simple yet profound message that we can find our own way forward by once again becoming aware of nature. It’s quite interesting.
Investing in single-plank wood is to pursue natural living and embracing the abundance created by nature.
Sakaguchi: People are becoming too detached from nature, and as a result, places like cities, where it’s hard to feel the power of nature, are getting more fragmented and isolated, and you have these unnatural phenomena such as suicides and epidemics occurring. Meanwhile, you have the reality of people, including myself, having to live in cities in order to work and live. And that’s why even in these skyscraper-lined environments, I want to put in place the wood lifeforce, which provides vitality. It could be a one-plank table, a work desk, or even a cutting board. To be “back to nature”, all you need is to incorporate into your everyday life even a single thing that connects you to nature. I believe we can prevent our world from growing into an unnatural place by coming up with products that bring humans closer to nature.
Kato: It seems like investing in single-plank wood that connects us to nature would bring about a hefty spiritual return, for example, a sense of returning to nature or a renewed awareness of our roots as Japanese people. Since we at WealthPark Lab stress that investing isn’t just about chasing financial returns, I think learning about single-plank wood today has given me even further insight in this regard.
Sakaguchi: I think that single-plank wood investment is completely different from investing in financial instruments in terms of the timeline. You can follow the life of nature and have the wealth created by nature in your hands. I also think that this is the essence of wealth.
Kato: I myself am in the business of educating people about investment, and I believe that the essence of investment that enriches society and individuals is bringing quality things into your life as a matter of course, and over a long time span. You could even say that a single-plank wood is the best asset class for learning the essence of investment, because you can learn about a long-term investment that includes the next generation, instead of trying to make money with short-term transactions. I, for one, will support WONDERWOOD so that more and more people can enjoy this kind of experience. Thank you very much for your time today.
