At the end of the set up day I asked Mr. Tanaka about his favorite trees at the show. And he took me to see two trees I completely missed. This is the story of what he told me.
The first tree is root-over-rock trident maple. It is owned by Mr. Yanai and I remembered him from Bjorn’s
video about Bunjin-gi trees. Oyakata explained that this is an old tree, maybe even 100 years old, and 100 years ago someone threaded the roots through the stone and grew this tree slowly. It is not a strong “in your face” tree, but it has a great feeling and great history as a bonsai.
Speaking of bonsai history – the second tree that Oyakata took me to look at was a 500 year old white pine grafted onto a black pine trunk. And he said that it was grafted 500 years ago. So around the same time that Columbus was “discovering” America a dude in Japan was grafting white pine branches onto a black pine trunk. That just blew my mind!
And to finish off with another great tree, although it was not in the show, here is a picture of a tree the John Milton wired and oyakata "made look nice" for a client. This tree is about 4 feet toll (those are two b fours under it).
There are a ton of pictures I took at the show, but I am not sure if I should write about all those, or just post a link to the album - suggestions are welcome. One thing is for sure - I will be writing my next post about the visit to Gyozan!
