World Wide Bonsai

Eastern Tokyo's Edogawa City is made up primarily of residential districts and light industry, with schools and the odd small park thrown in. But amid this urban sprawl, beyond a traditionally designed wooden gateway, lies a small, green oasis of old and very carefully tended plants.

Kobayashi Kunio opened the Shunka-en Bonsai Gallery eight years ago with the aim of promoting the art of miniaturized plants to a wider—and increasingly international—audience. Since then, thousands of people have strolled through his gardens, workshops and display areas, taking away a new understanding and wonder for a cultural heritage that has become synonymous with Japan.

"I still remember the very first time that I saw a real, true bonsai tree, on display in the Sakafuten exhibition, held near Tokyo Station," says the sprightly sixty-year-old Kobayashi. "I was in my twenties and it was just a revelation."

The bonsai plant that s tar ted Kobayashi's own journey was not any old tree, but the venerable—and 600 years old—"Oku no kyosho," or "Pine at the End of the Road."

"It was so powerful and impressive that I decided that I wanted to follow that path and become a bonsai artist," he said. It helped that Kobayashi had grown up in a family that was involved in the potted plant business, providing cyclamen and other plants for markets and wholesale, and had attended a gardening high school near the present site of his gallery, which has traditionally been a horticultural area serving Tokyo.

Back then, he said, there was a boom in interest in bonsai that he was able to tap into, developing thousands of cuttings that sold very quickly. The money he made was then invested in much older trees, many of which still adorn the grounds of the gallery.

Within the walls of the museum, the ground is covered with fine gravel or paving stones, reminiscent of a temple. Apprentices are carefully pruning and tending plants atop turntables in the workshop, the tools of their trade laid out alongside them. On the other side of the compound, a glass-fronted building houses dozens of beautifully carved wooden tables designed to best show off the plants' attributes. Nearby are hundreds of pots, ranging from shallow containers several feet long to delicate fire-glazed bowls. Many are several hundred years old and were brought back to Japan from China—where they had been used as incense holders—in the early decades of the last century. The first character in the Japanese word "bonsai" means pot, underlining the importance of what some see as a mere container to the overall effect.

Perfect Miniatures

Lined up in the window are trees that were up for selection in the Kokufuten Competition, the highlight of the bonsai aficionados' year and a competition that Kobayashi has received awards at on fifteen occasions.

A perfectly miniaturized zelkova, a member of the elm family, has clearly received years of tender care. Its branches have been teased in just the right direction to make a perfect umbrella shape atop the trunk. Grown from a seed and worked on for fifty years or so, the shape is entirely man-made.

In contrast, the other two entrants are far more the work of nature. Discovered high in the Japanese mountains several hundred years ago, juniper trees that had suffered damage at the hands of wildlife or the elements were brought down and their still living parts encouraged to grow. The result is the darker, living wood twisting around the dead white parts, with deep green leaves emerging from the branches.

Back in the courtyard, plants that prefer the warmth of the sun are sheltered beneath the eaves of the museum building. A flowering plum already has pale pink blooms at the tips of its branches, a white pine cascades delicately over the edge of its container. Trident maples, Chinese quince and magnolias stand atop slightly raised wooden tables.

"You can grow almost any plant as a bonsai, although specimens are chosen for their suitability and happiness at being in a pot," says Peter Warren, a Briton who first came to study under Kobayashi six years ago. "If you take a maple and work on it at the right time of year, the DNA in the plant makes the leaves shrink. The leaves of an oak tree, on the other hand, will never become smaller and large leaves then look out of place on a tiny bonsai."

Pointing out the twisted trunk of one plant, Warren says the appeal to many bonsai-lovers is the contrast between the gnarled and aged bark, the "cranky" movements in the branches—and then the beautiful and delicate flowers at their extremities.

Growing Enthusiasm

Originally from Thirsk, in North Yorkshire, thirty-year-old Warren plans to set up his own bonsai garden in the county of Kent and is in the lengthy process of sending a container of around thirty plants to Britain to start the project, an indicator of the global spread of this very Japanese pastime.

"There's a quiet enthusiasm in England and lots of people who collect bonsai and put them in their gardens, but not on show," he said. "They are much more enthusiastic in Italy and Spain, where they like to show off their plants more."

Yet there are differences in the way bonsai has developed overseas from its roots in Japan, he adds.

"In the West, everyone has studied bonsai in books and tried to do things that would seem perhaps odd in Japan," Warren says. "There is also a very short-term way of looking at and growing trees because they do not have the hundreds of years of history and knowledge that we have here. That's not so say that their techniques are not, in many cases, phenomenal, but it's just different."

It comes as a surprise to many that bonsai were not originally a Japanese creation. Plants grown in containers can be found as far back as ancient Egypt, with potted olive and date trees often found in the grounds of temples. The term "penzai" cropped up in China during the Jin Dynasty, of 265 AD to 420 AD, with trees grown in containers soon found across the country, as well as in Korea and Vietnam. The practice spread to Japan during China's Song Dynasty, between 960 and 1279, a time when Japan was importing and adapting many of mainland Asia's cultural pastimes. Cultivation of plants became a hobby of the wealthy and influential during the Edo period (1603–1867), also a time noted for the development of some of Japan's most famous traditional gardens.

Japanese bonsai devotees perfected the styling of these tiny trees, which Masumi Tomohiro says fit perfectly with the people and society of this country.

"Bonsai help people feel they are closer to nature," said Masumi, owner of the Koju-en bonsai nursery in Kyoto. "When you work on a bonsai plant, you react to it but at the same time feel nearer to the forests or mountains—even though you might be in an apartment in the middle of a city.

"Japanese homes are very small and often people cannot have a garden so there is a big demand for bonsai," said Masumi, who is also a member of the All Japan Shohin Bonsai Association, with "shohin" meaning small plants that range up to 18 cm in height.

Speaking at a bonsai exhibition in Kyoto, he said most bonsai gardeners are older, but that there has been a surge in popularity among young people for the smaller plants. And he adds that while it might look difficult to cultivate some of the miniature works of art that are on display, anyone can try it.

Thoroughly Modern Bonsai

Termed "pop bonsai," these plants are a more modern take on the ancient approach, with seedlings encouraged to grow out of beer cans, coffee mugs or any other receptacle and encourage the owner to use his or her imagination and creativity.

"If you use young trees it can take many years to grow, but it is not so difficult," said Masumi. "You just need to take care of them because they're really just small trees in a pot. And that's the beauty of bonsai."

There are numerous possible styles that a plant can be encouraged to take, ranging from the formal upright style—known as "chokkan"—through cascades of tiny foliage that is reminiscent of flowing water, groups of trees that resemble growing forests, and individual plants whose roots grow out of the cracks and holes in a rock, a style known as "ishizuke."

Several communities across Japan have built their local economy on bonsai, with Kinashi, in Kagawa Prefecture, one of the most famous. More than 200 years ago, a local man who collected pine tree saplings he found nearby, cultivated and then sold them. Kinashi now provides more than 80 percent of Japan's bonsai pine trees, with the elegant Kuro-matsu and graceful Nishikimatsu the most sought-after around the world. The town hosts fairs three times every month and two "Grand Fairs," in March and November.

Similarly, Bonsai Village, near the town of Omiya in Saitama Prefecture, makes its living from miniature plants. Famous around the world, the village covers some 330,000 square meters and is home to hundreds of thousands of bonsai plants and several private bonsai gardens. The highlight of every year is the Great Bonsai Festival, held each May.

Kobayashi's museum is designed in a very Japanese style, with sixteen individual rooms of tatami mat floors and bonsai displayed in tokonoma, complete with a hanging scroll designed to accentuate the plant. In one, birds on the scroll appear to be descending on a bonsai gardenia with fruit, completing a natural scene. In a neighboring room, a black pine in root-over-rock style is placed beneath a scroll of Mount Fuji. Three tea-ceremony rooms have hearths and look out over the gravel garden and bonsai creations.

Kobayashi is much more of a traditionalist when it comes to bonsai, although he agrees that taking the discipline in new directions—such as the aforementioned pop bonsai—is important if it is to discover a new audience and a new lease of life.

"Japanese bonsai has a very long history, lots of knowledge and very high quality trees and containers, but I feel that there is a lot more appreciation of bonsai in other countries then here now," he says. "My aim is to pass on my knowledge of bonsai to the next generation and people all over the world, but I do want people to better recognize the beauty of the idea behind bonsai."

Surrounded, as he is, by bonsai every day, does he never get tired of his chosen profession?

"I still get that old feeling whenever I see a particularly good example," he said. "The aesthetics of the plant may be very attractive, but there is also the inner element. It is seeing the living and the dead combining to create a vision of beauty.

"When I look at a good bonsai, I have a feeling of the importance of life and new respect for nature," he added. "These trees have been struggling to survive for so long and I feel humbled by that."