"Bonsai is a wonderful hobby."
This is because people of all generations can easily enjoy it.
Gardening brings the charm of living things into our lives.
It is a hobby that brings about peace of mind.
It can be called an example of the ultimate art, to bring up a plant in
a pot as small as a matchbox.
Bonsai makes it possible to bring Mother Nature close to us.
Therefore I believe that Bonsai is the most wonderful hobby.
I am pleased with my bonsai when its flowers blossom and its fruits appear.
I am impressed by watching how its branches become more and more solid
every year.
This is a kind of pleasure that only a bonsai-lover may experience.
The joy of bonsai is not limited to the bringing up of plants.
When you bring up a plant with love, you can learn through it a number
of things.
You will learn how to display bonsai.
You will learn the feeling of unity between Nature and Humans.
You will learn about changes in seasons and about changes in time.
You will learn a new life-view.
Still, apart from all that, bonsai has one quality, which is more wonderful
than any other.
It brings us peace of mind.
Below I will describe the ideal ways of making and admiring bonsai.
Furthermore, on the following pages, you will find more thorough development
of this theory of mine, briefly presented in this article.
However, I want to stress that this series of articles is addressed to
beginners, and has no aspiration of a scholarly paper.
In bonsai art, the main purpose is not to bring up or not to style.
It is an artistic deed to display the Bonsai.
The main purpose of bonsai is to appreciation and admire it.
In order to appreciate bonsai properly, several rules have been developed.
Below I present my comments concerning the purpose of these rules.
I would particularly like to address them to bonsai lovers from abroad,
who may live in totally different cultures and in different life-styles
than in Japan.
I do not apply Japanese rules to all over the world.
Each person who admires a bonsai plant should apply the specific rules
of their own culture. However, bonsai-lovers from all over the world can
easily create the rules complying with their own culture, when they grasp
the purpose of the rules applied in Japanese bonsai.
For me, the idea of either making or admiring a bonsai plant, lies in bringing
to mind an image of a wonderful tree growing naturally and in the wild
- its beautiful shape and its surrounding landscape.
Then, I can touch the elegance constructed by the artist in his piece of
art.
However, for most bonsai-lovers, the purpose of both growing and admiring
bonsai has been limited to shapes of a plant.
In my bonsai-work, first I select an adequate plant to express the landscape
that I want to create with it.
Then, when I am forming the plant, my foremost endeavor is to reach due
balance between my own feeling of bonsai-art on one side, and the sense
of aesthetics, which has developed in my by the specific features of Japanese
climate, on the other.
Such a combination of endeavors will surely, one day, bring out the awareness
of the artistic nature of bonsai, and bonsai will then rank with other
arts.
"When you bring up a plant with love, you can learn through it a number
of things..."
Looking back at the "easy" ways of bonsai-creation commonly practiced
- I believe that in order to create a bonsai, which is harmonious and balanced,
I need to expend more effort.
Among pieces of industrial art, created as an ornament for the tokonoma
(an alcove in a traditional Japanese home) or a tea-room, there are pieces
completely inappropriate, regardless of their elegance and refinement.
The same may apply to pieces of bonsai-art: a tree earnestly and beautifully
shaped against the natural landscape may totally lose its balance and refined
harmony when I suddenly place it in a tokonoma, nearby pieces of industrial
art.
I have only briefly touched on the above problem in this article, which
is intend to serve as a broad introduction to bonsai display in the space
of our houses.
When I go into detail, we learn there are differences between this point
of view; practices traditionally applied in bonsai, and practices characteristic
to various schools of bonsai-display.
Please accept this.
by HIGUCHI TAKESHI
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