NO these bonsai are not packed for sale! That’s winter protection for valuable bonsai masterpieces  at Mr. Takeyama’s Fuyo-en bonsai garden.  More later

Today Diane, Corin, Lee and I spent a COLD day with our friend Megumi Kadokura, who lives in Omiya. Her grandfather was a prominent bonsai artist. Unfortunately the garden does not exist now but, I feel fortunate to have met in in 1970.

It has been unusually COLD here in Japan. Yesterday was 24-33oF with wind. At home, in Rochester, New York, it is now -1oF and is still getting colder with over 100 inches, and it not over until May.

Throughout the bonsai village many trees have been moved for a bit of protection, much more than I’ve seen in the past 56 years.

We first visited Toju-en Bonsai Garden of Hirota Katana, the new owner. This young 26 year old man now runs the bonsai garden where Masahiko Kimura and Shinji Suzuki studied. The garden was established by Motosuke Hamano in 1934. I saw several unusual container stands. He has an EXCELLENT YouTube channel “Bonsai Q”. After serving us delicious soup he made for lunch, he showed us around and answered every question we had, in English too.

Of course, we stopped by the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum to study their masterpiece bonsai. Like in all the other gardens the trees were dormant and all the foliage on the Juniper bonsai was a lovely “bronze” color most people would consider to be dead. Many plants prepare by changing color to adapt to the cold winter weather. The recent water garden seems to be maturing and is surrounded by bonsai. Photos are now allowed, except the indoor gallery.

Moving on, we made brief stops at Mansei-en (Takahiro Kato) and Seiko-en (Tomio Yamada) bonsai gardens.

Of course, our final visit was to Hiroshi Takeyama’s Fuyo-en Bonsai Garden. He specializes in fine deciduous and unusual species and forest plantings. Throughout the past decades I’ve seen a couple of his bonsai protected with blankets then covered with poly. There were many more this year. He even builds boxes which are covered with blue tarps which can be seen. The roots of plants are NOT as winter-hardy as the trunks and branches. All the bonsai protected were deciduous flowering and fruiting species, like Chinese quince, Flowering quince and a few Zelkova. 

Additionally, Mr. Takeyama carefully removes a ring of soil on many of his pot bound bonsai in autumn. Then he fills the ditch with fresh soil. Yes, many of the circling roots were trimmed. He does this for two reasons, as the soil freezes in winter it expands and often breaks valuable antique containers. These bonsai will be repotted in spring so trimming the roots is fine. Also, they are easier to accept water. His best deciduous trees and those in shallow containers are kept  in an unheated poly house.

He showed us a new double flowering winter flowering cherry. I’ve seen a great number of Winter flowering cherry, Prunus campanula, especially at winter exhibitions, but they were light pink with larger blossoms. He mentioned that it came from Taiwan. I thought Taiwan was a warm sub-tropical country.

I like the Full-Moon maple, Acer japonicum, which is native to Japan and Korea. It is a similar to the widely popular Japanese maple, Acer palmatum, which is also native to Japan, Korea China and Russia. The Full-Moon maple has slightly larger leaves than the Japanese species. However, the main difference is in the leaf shape. Japanese maples have five, seven and rarely nine acutely long serrated leaf lobes which are often extend to the main petiole. While the Full-Moon maple has seven to 13 serrated leaf lobes which are not as long and look like a full moon shape with the shorter leaf lobes. In early spring the young foliage of Full-Moon maples have a white downy hair which is gone by the summer.

There are only a handful of Full-Moon maple cultivars, with the Golden full-moon maple the most popular because of the bright yellow spring growth. Japanese maples, on the other hand have well over 1,000 different cultivars.

During the past 50 plus years have learned that both maple species can be easily trained for bonsai. The Full-Moon maple appears to be more winter-hardy than the delicate Japanese maple cultivars. The Full-Moon maple has larger leaves and thick heavy twigs, not the thin branches characterized by Japanese maples. The Full-Moon maple does not respond well to summer defoliation and sometimes will not leaf out until the following spring. Even if leaf defoliation is successful, the twigs will continue to develop into a coarse twigs and branching. This is no problem because the leaves are fewer and larger. Big specimen Full-Moon maples are more commonly seen. However, I have seen several shohin sized Full-Moon maple bonsai with proportioned size leaves. The flowers of Full-Moon maples are larger and more attractive than the Japanese maples. The flowers of both species develop into winged-seeds called samaras.

The foliage buds on Full-Moon maples are a bit more pointed and larger. Often the leaves do not drop in autumn and must be carefully removed by hand. This characteristic of retaining some foliage throughout the winter is called “marcescence” which is common with Beech and Oak. Often the old dried out leaves persist to protect the young buds for spring growth.

Golden Full-Moon Maple

Acer japonicum (shirasawanum) ‘Kinkakure’ ‘Aureum’

Full-Moon Maple

Full-Moon Maple

Acer japonicum (shirasawanum)

Full-Moon Maple

Acer japonicum (shirasawanum)

Two-Line Cascade Bonsai

In early 1972 I purchased a Full-Moon maple growing in a three-gallon nursery pot which had a low growing second trunk. It is interesting to note that the trunks have not increased in thickness during the past 55 years of container growth using bonsai training techniques. But the mature bark appearance has developed.

This bonsai has dependable autumn color. It “was” a beautiful two-line full cascade bonsai until it went flying off the post it was tied to in 2016. The lower trunk snapped about halfway to the end. I left the broken stub to remain to see where new adventitious buds would develop. The unusual Chinese bonsai container shattered when it fell, however, Alan Adair did an excellent job piecing it back together using two-part epoxy and Superglue. I really liked the container so kept it. After the accident it was transplanted into a shallow, blue-glazed container and a new lower branch was allowed to grow wild to thicken the lower trunk. In 2022 it was repotted into a deeper, blue-glazed container to increase vigor. During the past two growing seasons the bonsai produced a bud in the desire position and was allowed to grow to nine feet long. The upper branches were not trimmed back except for the crown. In 2023 a heavy iron rebar was used to shape the lower trunk line. 

The lower trunk line will be shortened by at least five feet in spring 2026. This bonsai is now being recreated into a new bonsai. Perhaps better than the original form. Time will tell and I’m having fun recreating the beauty. I’m going shopping in Tokoname, Japan, in a few weeks to see if a new, higher-quality container can be discovered. But large round or equal-sided glazed containers are difficult to locate. But I know the perfect ceramic artist who can custom make a new colorful new container.

Steve Zeisel, sponsor and organizer of the Winter Silhouette Bonsai Expo did it again! A huge crowd of visitors and bonsai enthusiasts enjoyed an elegant display of fine bonsai! Every bonsai was of much better quality than in the first 12 exhibitions featuring naked trees. He privately holds the event to promote bonsai and allows exhibitors to express their beautiful bonsai and creative displays, especially in their winter appearance. 

There are more bonsai this year, and all were better designed and exquisitely displayed and prepared. Each exhibitor was allocated a six or eight-foot table to fill. A critique on Sunday morning will discuss some basic display information, as well as bonsai design so exhibitors can improve their bonsai for next year’s Winter Silhouette Bonsai Expo.

The highly regarded and anticipated Winter Silhouette Bonsai Expo was again held at the North Carolina Research Center in Kannapolis, outside Charlotte, North Carolina, on December 6-7, 2025.

In addition to the bonsai on display, in a magnificent five story rotunda which is covered in imported Italian marble, several suiseki and accessory plantings were shown. Steve has had an excellent track record of hosting this elegant display which also had three rooms of vendors combined with demonstrations.

Several demonstrations and a wide variety of vendors completed the exhibition as well as critique on Sunday morning for exhibitors. On Saturday afternoon, there was a benefit auction to help defray the costs to produce this fine exhibition. It’s one of my most favorite events of the year which I look forward to.

There were also several high quality shohin bonsai displays, all exquisitely displayed.

A well-deserved thank you to Steve Zeisel and his team for organizing another successful Winter Silhouette Bonsai Expo. Attached are my quick photos so you can see the bonsai now, taken with my iPhone 17 Pro Max and my new Meta Ray Ban glasses. Joe Noga is professionally photographing the show and his high-quality images will be forthcoming, along with the Award Winners.

This year’s exhibition featured several deciduous species well developed forest plantings.

The only Zen garden in a Buddhist Temple is located in the Daitoku-ji Temple complex in Kyoto, Japan. It is quite close to the world-famous Daisen-in garden. Now photos are allowed!

The Hoshu-in Bonsai Garden which displays about 30 masterpiece bonsai selected and managed by Seiji Morimae and his S-Cube staff. They are frequently rotated and new masterpieces from private collections are highlighted. 

This is a MUST to visit when in Kyoto, you will not be disappointed.

YES I did!…. still in one piece!

Today we visited the Daiju-en Bonsai Garden of Toru Suzuki, third generation bonsai artist. 

Saichi Suzuki (1902 – 1991)

Toshinori Suzuki (1925 – 2007)

Toru Suzuki (1954 –

Takuya Suzuki (1984 –

The Suzuki family is one of the longest, most prominent and well-respected bonsai family in Japan.

Saichi Suzuki established his Daiju-En Bonsai Garden, in Okazaki, Japan in 1931. The Suzuki family has been studying and refining pine bonsai for nearly 100 years. Many of the common and current pine training and trimming techniques were discovered and refined at the Daiju-En Bonsai Garden.

Historically, Saichi Suzuki introduced the Dwarf Zuisho Japanese Five-needle pine in 1934. Together with his family, they actively promoted it as a new dwarf cultivar ideally suited for bonsai training and has thin, straight, short and light-green needles. It has a fast-growing character and elegant appeal. Masahiko Kimura actively grows and shapes Zuisho and often uses this cultivar when presenting demonstrations for the Zuisho Bonsai Society. Often, many of his Zuisho bonsai he has trained are displayed in Zuisho only exhibitions.

Daiju-en Bonsai Garden is not large, but rather compact filled with beautifully displayed bonsai and filled with masterpiece Japanese five-needle pine, Japanese red pine and Japanese black pine bonsai in all sizes.

This is a unique bonsai garden with several huge stones framing the trees. The Suzuki family maintains several private bonsai collections as well. Scattered throughout the garden are numerous Princess persimmons and a few colorful maple bonsai shinning with their autumn dress.

A cascade Ginkgo? There is a weeping cultivar, butI don’t think this it. Started by cutting off a hanging aerial root and rooting it

Mr. Suzuki likes to share his family’s research on developing pine bonsai around the world. Recently in September he traveled to Rochester, New York to demonstrate his techniques and judge the 2025 9^th U.S. National Bonsai Exhibition.

Last week during our visit to Kunio Kobayashi’s Shunka-en Bonsai Museum I watched as he prepared his demo tree, which “was” quite large with a hefty trunk and thick plated dark bark. The Japanese black pine was originally from Takamatsu, the pine bonsai capital of the world. Mr. Kobayashi mentioned that he only purchased the tree last week at one of Mr. Morimae’s frequent auctions held at his large bonsai complex. When Mr. Kobayashi bid on this tree all the Chinese buyers kept raising their bids because it must be a good tree if Mr. Kobayashi wanted it. Well, Mr. Kobayashi won the tree and went for over the value. But he said, after I shape the tree it will be worth a small fortune.

He was assisted four apprentices and graduate apprentices who came to assist their teacher. Former student Jin Yasufumi is the curator of Mr. Kobayashi’s museum and speaks excellent English, and knows bonsai too. Both of these talented artists kept a fast-moving program and all questions were answered in both Japanese and English. They both have a friendly personality and worked well together, including some humor too.

I have seen quite a number of bonsai demonstrations around the world and seen the best artists create magic with their trees. I have to truthfully state that I did not leave the demo room for two hours. Even Mr. Kimura’s many times watched demos could not keep me in the room. Last year Shinji Suzuki also presented one of the finest programs I’ve seen, but did get up a few times.

People were captivated with the use of two different size chainsaws to eliminate unneeded branches and roots too. We use Sawzall reciprocating tools at home, especially to quickly reduce root balls, then refine the roots using common bonsai tools.

Just as he was finishing shaping the bonsai he asked the audience what shape container would look good for is new bonsai and enhance its beauty. Well, Mr. Kobayashi had the perfect container hidden in back and was all prepared for planting. In only 30 minutes his army of assistants removed the four-man size bonsai, drastically prune the roots, transplant the tree, repositioned the tree s few times according to Mr. Kobayashi’s instructions and even covered the complete soil surface with fresh, prepared bright green moss. He did not feel this was too much stress for the tree since it has an abundance of fine feeder roots and he will protect it this coming winter.

That was one of the best two-hour learning sessions I’ve experienced and enjoyed. After visiting the men’s room at the conclusion, and I did wash my hands before congratulating Mr. Kobayashi for his stellar presentation.

The exhibition opened today at 8:45am with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Unlike other openings only two short welcoming speeches were made, in Japanese of course.

Then we proceeded with cutting the ribbon welcoming visitors. I was very surprised that the foyer of the opening ceremony was not even filled. Usually it is packed with visitors, mostly from foreign countries. There was not a great presence of foreign visitors this year because most people are waiting for the upcoming 100^th Kokufu Bonsai Exhibition in February. However, there were a good number of European visitors.

The exhibition was very sparse with visitors, but this allowed others to easily photograph the bonsai. Too bad, because this year there were quite a number of masterpiece bonsai beautifully displayed this year there and a good number of large size bonsai, Chinese huge size. There were only two or three shohin bonsai compositions, probably because this same building will be overflowing with hundreds of small-size trees in early-January. Last year I actually counted nearly 600 shohin and mame size bonsai.

The sales area was of course filled with everything should want for bonsai except for sale. I spent three days here, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and walked around in this room for 4.9 miles. We visited the exhibition until we almost dropped and had to take a short nap before dinner at our hotel resting up for the next day of bonsai study.

The 45^th 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,

On the way to Kyoto for garden tours and the major Nippon Bonsai Taikan Exhibition this coming weekend, we stopped and enjoyed the warm hospitality of Mr. & Mrs. Kunio Kobayashi at their Bonsai Museum. Located in the Edogawa Ward of Tokyo it is visited by numerous foreigners from around the world. My good friend Megumi Kadokura from Omiya joined us for this and other visits to the Japanese bonsai world. Her grandfather had a major bonsai garden in the 1950s in Omiya, so she actually grew up with bonsai. Everywhere she joins us the bonsai community is familiar with her family’s bonsai garden.

Mr. Kobayashi is a friendly talented, skilled and creative bonsai artist who has presented over 200 demonstrations in 30 countries. He has received all the top bonsai awards in Japan. He is well known for his impressive and huge Japanese black pine bonsai. Although I last visited his garden in late April on my way home from teaching in China, I was really amazed at the large number of large-size Japanese black pines in training. Large, heavy trunked trees require unusual mechanical tools for shaping.

When our group arrived in the morning he was giving an interview to Oscar Joker from Holland who teaches under his Bonsai Empire business. As he was answering questions he moved back and forth from his studio to his reception room full of foreign guests and again into his studio.

Mr. Kobayshi is presenting a demonstration on Saturday at the Nippon Bonsai Taikan Exhibition in Kyoto. He was cleaning out his four-man size Japanese black pine demonstration tree. He used an air compressor to blow away debris from the center of tree. I also noticed a leaf blower he also probably uses.

Many of the branches were tied and labeled with raffia circles indicating which branches he intends to remove and shape on Saturday. We watched as four small-sized, but strong apprentices loaded the tree in a truck while Mr. Kobayashi directed the move. Hopefully I’ll have an opportunity to watch and learn from this creative artist and report with a few images while he shapes this large bonsai. You will not believe how he intends to shape this bonsai! Stay tuned for an update on his demonstration later on this week.