The 45th edition of this national level exhibition is being held on November 21-23, 2025 at the Miyako Messe in Kyoto, Japan. This is one of my favorite exhibitions in Japan because the bonsai are commonly displayed with hanging scrolls, suiseki and other fine art, with paintings too. An entire display can suggest a special personal memory or just a good story. This style of creative bonsai display is not commonly seen in Japan.
Many years ago this exhibition had yellow, green and blue backgrounds which were difficult to photograph. A few years later some black backgrounds were introduced which were a bit easier to photograph. This year nearly the entire show has matt black backgrounds, but now fluorescent lighting has been added, but are the trees are a bit difficult to photograph because of the uneven lighting causing glares. I could not see this problem at the exhibition, but was surprised with the image quality when the images were adjusted on my Mac laptop computer. But, I’m hoping to fix this problem because I still have two more complete days at the exhibition. However, four rows of the old yellow were still being used.
Today was the final day for set up and judging to select the prize-winning bonsai. There were about 12-15 judges and it only took us about an hour of judging. Since the contenders for awards were moved from the display areas to long rows according to the categories by species and styles to be evaluated, many of the final displays were not yet set up. My iPhone and new AI eyeglasses are working well to capture the beauty of each the bonsai and displays. After we finished judging I stayed a few more hours to photograph more bonsai.
Stay tuned for my next group of photos tomorrow so you can see the current state of Japanese bonsai refinement and display styling,
