Japan's Bonsai

About this book

Tell a shimpaku from a needle juniper, a shohin from a masterpiece. Bonsai is the slowest craft in Japan — an art measured in decades and fifty thousand waterings — yet no English guide has ever organised its whole world in one place. This complete guide presents 200 trees, places, styles, techniques and traditions in one uniform, comparable format: each entry's story, its species, soil and technique, its form, style and character, and how it is grown, visited and cared for. Walk the benches of the Omiya Bonsai Village and the pine fields of Takamatsu, learn the grammar of the styles from formal upright to cascade, read any tree in four checks — nebari, trunk, branches, season — and finish with the history, aesthetics and honest ethics of keeping a tree for a lifetime. A working companion for travellers, gardeners and craft lovers, written to be kept as long as the trees it describes.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.