The precious white grape variety, cultivated by Yuki Nakamura in Japan, it took 33 years to develop. But it is now grown reluctantly in China and South Korea without paying royalties in the Japanese archipelago.

Packaged like jewels, seedless table grapes Shine Muscat are among the many varieties of fruit that Japan has patiently developed. And their price is just as juicy as their rice, sometimes reaching the equivalent of 100 euros per kilo in the big shops of Tokyo.

“The amazing thing about Shine Muscat is that each cluster of the grape grows large, sprouts easily and is sweet, but not overly so,” Nakamura explains to AFP at his farm in Ueda, near Nagano, in the heart of the Japanese Alps ( central Japan).

This 35-year-old viticulturist dreams of exporting his grapes to places where Japanese fruit is becoming popular, such as Hong Kong or Thailand.

But there, as on the Internet, one finds imitations of Shine Muscat originating in China and South Korea and sold cheaper.

According to Japan, China and South Korea have taken Shine Muscat vines and successfully used them as grafts in their country to produce grapes with similar appearance and taste.

Customers “watch the price,” says Shau, a fruit vendor in a busy Hong Kong market, where genuine Japanese Shine Muscats sell for two or three times more than their Chinese imitations.

“But you can smell the difference” in quality between a Japanese Shine Muscat and its knockoffs, the seller, who prefers to give only his first name, assures AFP.

Negligence and naivety

The first Chinese imitations of Shine Muscat were discovered in 2016, a decade after this new grape variety was registered in the Japanese archipelago.

But Japan has no legal means to compel China or South Korea to stop growing Shine Muscat or pay royalties: because, improbably, Tokyo did not register the variety abroad within the deadlines set by international regulations, the Japanese Minister of Agriculture explains to AFP.

The Japanese producers erred on the side of naivety, as they did not imagine that other countries would have the idea to copy Shine Muscat.

“It was difficult” to make farmers aware of the need to consider fruits as “intellectual property”, adds the minister.

Japan cannot export its grapes to mainland China because of very strict Chinese quarantine regulations.

But if Beijing ever recognizes Japan’s rights to Shine Muscat, “this could bring in royalties of over ten billion yen (62.7 million euros at today’s exchange rate) annually,” Yasunori Ebihara, director of protection, told AFP. of trademarks filed for plants with the Ministry of Agriculture.

The ministry thus expresses its regret that new strawberry, cherry or citrus varieties created in Japan are copied abroad. But even in these cases, Tokyo neglected to adequately secure intellectual property.

The Japanese treasure their fruit, to the point where they sometimes spend insane sums to acquire the finest of all kinds. In 2019, for example, two Yubari melons from the island of Hokkaido (northern Japan) sold for a record price of 5 million yen (over 40,000 euros at the then exchange rate).

“Japanese farmers are also trying to produce better quality fruit, always sweeter and tastier,” according to Ebihara.

As of 2020, Japan has banned the taking abroad of seeds and young plants of varieties protected on its territory, subjecting violators to severe penalties of up to ten years in prison.

At his farm near Nagano, Yuri Nakamura is delighted that Shine Muscat grapes are now known throughout Asia.

But he doesn’t like to see “something that Japan spent so much time producing” grown and sold abroad without respect for all that effort.