The 44th Nippon Bonsai Taikan Exhibition is now being held on November 22-25, 2024 at the Miyako Messe Exhibition Hall in Kyoto, Japan. This is the second most important bonsai exhibition in Japan and visitors from around the world travel to see, study and find out what is new in the Japanese bonsai community.
Set up was on Thursday the day before the show opened. The best three trees in each category were brought onto long tables. A few of the categories included evergreens (LMS), deciduous (LMS) Satsuki azaleas (LMS), forest plantings, rock plantings and three sections of suiseki. At 1:30 pm the actual judging with 11 important authorities from Japan and three foreigners from China, Europe and the United States. A total of 20 awards were selected. I had selected 18 out of 20 winners.
After the final judging finished at about 2:45 pm the trees were returned to their assigned display positions.
On Friday and Saturday I’ll be conducting a walking tour of the exhibition.
New this year are demonstrations by Masahiko Kimura, Kunio Kobayashi, Shinji Suzuki and two other artists. The demonstrations took about two hours in length and Mr. Kobayashi and Mr. Kimura kind of worked on two bonsai together, which was very entertaining. Demonstrations will also be held on Saturday and Sunday. There is a $20 admission fee for each day. On Friday tickets sold out quickly and many viewers were sitting on the floor or standing in the back watching the artists (actors?) performing.
I hope you enjoy the accompanying images as much as I have, it was one of the better-quality Nippon Bonsai Taikan Exhibitions. More to comb!