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The pine below is several years out of the ground and is showing signs of becoming a bonsai.

When our tour visited Seiji Morimae last week in his garden, he took me aside and told me of an important bonsai exhibit we should visit. I asked the name of the exhibit and the location in case we were in the area or for directions of how to get there. Out came his iPhone and he made a phone call to get me the exact venue. I was prepared to get a difficult address, in Japanese only, only to find the taxi driver could not find the location. He quickly said OK, the exhibit is at the Meifu Bonsai Exhibition which was on our itinerary. Sometimes one gets lucky, fate was in our favor. The exhibit was so significant that Mr. Morimae made the trip from his garden in Hanyu, Saitama Prefecture to Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture. He even wrote about the memorial exhibit in his Japanese S-Cube blog. His photograph appears in his blog during his visit.

The 90th Meifu Bonsai Exhibition was held on January 10-12, 2020 in the Fukiage Hall in Nagoya, Japan. It is sponsored by Chubu Bonsai Cooperative, which is a professional bonsai organization. The exhibition is held in a huge clear span building with excellent lighting and wide aisles. The Gafu Ten Shohin Exhibition, held in Kyoto, was held on the same dates so we were able to visit this exhibition as well.

 
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Sales Area
Like most exhibitions, this is the most popular area of the event. Most foreigners go past the bonsai exhibition upon entry and head directly to the sales area. Nearly anything you need or want for bonsai creation, training or appreciation can be found here, except for collected trees. A few items are quite inexpensive, but most are on the higher end because many Japanese spend more than foreigners on their hobby. Inside the sales area you can find a good size quick eating corner where hot food, sandwiches and bento boxes can be inexpensively purchased and enjoyed there. Near the entrance to the sales area a TV was playing a great video on shohin bonsai. Once inside a layout sign with the names of the 50 plus vendors are listed so you can find what you are looking for.

Special Displays
There are several special display in this year’s Gafu Ten Shohin Bonsai Exhibition. It was interesting to view the special display of Registered Important Masterpiece containers, all in clear plexi glass boxes. Matt Ouwinga from Maryland had three of his rare and antique pots displayed.

This morning the 45th Gafu Ten Shohin Bonsai Exhibition opened in Kyoto, Japan. This is the highest-level exhibition to show small size bonsai. Although a shohin bonsai exhibition, there were quite a few mame bonsai compositions as well as chuhin (medium) size bonsai. I have been fortunate to have visited and study this exhibition 40 years ago! At that time it was in a large two-story brick building with poor lighting. The current building, Miyako Messe is a modern building with superb lighting, which, unfortunately is a major cost for the organization.

Earlier this week, I presented a program on repotting for the East Bay Bonsai Society. We started by covering techniques for securing trees into containers based on the numbers of holes in the pot (see “Securing” for details).

Shunka-en Bonsai Museum
The Shunka-en Bonsai Museum of Kunio Kobayashi is always a special treat for our bonsai tours. Located in central Tokyo it is easy to find and visit. Here you can see superb developed masterpiece bonsai as well as many still in training, some in wooden boxes. But, perhaps this is the pinnacle where you can see fine quality bonsai formally displayed. There are about 12 individual alcoves, in formal, semi-formal and informal styles to study as well as displays in corners and an authentic working tea house. Tea masters often teach here because of the quiet atmosphere, beauty and workmanship of the buildings.

 
Our first day of touring the Japanese bonsai world included Mr. Morimae, Mr. Kimura, Omiya Bonsai Art Museum and the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum.

I was relieved when it was time to clean up the last azalea on the bench. A friend and I had thinned around forty trees over the previous few weeks (thanks Dylan!) but I was still looking forward to seeing how the last tree would turn out. It’s a mature ‘Kozan.’