This is a scam unless the seller can prove the tree was quarantined in Japan before shipping.
If you pay your money and the seller ships the tree without quarantine you're rolling the dice.
Customs and Border Protection or USDA could stop it and destroy it at the port of entry. OR it makes it through in a big box undetected at that port, which is later tracked to your home by CBP. Officers show up and ask you about contraband. They're nice and all, but you and your new tree might be screwed if they decide to pursue smuggling charges--and that's pretty much what you're doing.
If you get lucky and start illegally shipping this stuff repeatedly, I'd bet you'd be prosecuted.
Bottom line, there are VERY good reasons for quarantining bonsai imports. They are proven vectors of pests and diseases. Asian Longhorn beetles
hitched a ride into the NW U.S. in a shipment of maple bonsai from Korea back in the early 2000's. That stock (worth thousands to the nursery buyer in the US--John Muth at Bonsai Northwest) had to be destroyed, but not without collateral damage to the trees around the location. The dangers of new pathogens from imported trees and plants to U.S. agriculture is very real and potentially devastating in some cases.
I understand the frustration with not being able to directly import trees from Japan. There are some great deals there on spectacular trees. I am also wary of people who call those restrictions needless or "just Washington getting up in our business." Those complaints are mostly excuses for being selfish. Could it be easier to import? Yeah. Are some of the restrictions oppressive? Yeah, sure they are. But pouting like a 4 year old who's been denied his right to expensive ice cream sundaes is silly. Not saying that's the case here, but I've seen that pouting repeatedly over the years--and know that some have illegally imported mame and shohin in their luggage...
.....that maturity thing.......
