Heart of Japan’s Bonsai Culture: Explore the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum

Today, Bonsai is captivating people all over the world. And near Tokyo, there is a place known as its spiritual home, Omiya Bonsai Village in Saitama. This year marks the village's 100th anniversary. Born and natured as a traditional Japanese art form, Bonsai is becoming a shared language across cultures and continents. But why has Bonsai gained such worldwide attention? Even for us, born and raised in Japan, there is still so much to learn about its true essence. Hi, I'm Hannah and today we are here at the first public Bonsai museum in the world, which has recently renewed in the spring. As a 21-year-old who has lived here her entire life, this is also my first time visiting a Bonsai museum. If you want to truly enjoy the world of Bonsai, there's one place you simply can't miss, the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, the world's first public Bonsai museum, which opened in 2010. The Omiya Bonsai Village, once visited by former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, well-known as a Bonsai enthusiast, has also gained international recognition. Since 1980, Bonsai has gained popularity far beyond Japan, even in Spain, where many enthusiasts appreciate its beauty and artistry. In Alcabendas, a suburb of Madrid, the Alcabendas Bonsai Museum was established in 1995 by Luis Vallejo. The museum houses over 300 Bonsai trees that Mr. Vallejo has collected over the years, including pieces donated by former Prime Minister Gonzalez himself. The number of tourists from overseas had been on the rise, and on the day we visited, many were also at the Omiya Bonsai Museum. Oh my god. Bonsai from Canada, like I've seen some Bonsai trees, but didn't understand the full depth of the history of it, and that this was actually the Omiya village, right, of the Bonsai gardeners back in the day. And yeah, so I'm just, I'm excited to go see all the trees, and yeah, they're beautiful. I've always wanted to come to Japan to see a Bonsai garden. This has been a long life item on my bucket list. Really? And I've achieved it. So I'm really pleased, and I'm really impressed by the garden, because they've spent so much time on it, and I cannot believe that they have trees so old. At the museum, Bonsai enthusiasts were fully immersed in their visit, enjoying the exhibits as they lost track of time. Harry Turton, a UK-born coordinator who came to Japan in 2021. Wow, I don't think I've ever seen this many Bonsais in my life ever. Amazing. So here in the Bonsai garden, we have around 60 Bonsai on display at any one time. These ones will change slightly depending on the seasons. So if you come, you can come here a few times a year, and you'll see slightly different Bonsai depending on what season it is. Introduce the beauty, history, and appreciation of Bonsai in English. Each one is truly precious. From trees that are over 1,000 years old, to a Bonsai named Hokusai, which evokes the famous wave painting by the artist Katsushika Hokusai. So the museum was closed for quite a while, and one of the main things we were renewing here was this pond. So if you can look at it from the front here, you can kind of see quite an impressive spectacle being unveiled to you here. So the concept of this pond is to make it look like a valley, almost. You have a running water coming towards you here, and we have a centre pine in the middle there that's kind of looming over the river. It feels very meditative, I feel like. Especially with the sound as well. Yeah, definitely. At the centre of the newly renovated pond stands a Japanese white pine named Seiryu, or Blue Dragon, estimated to be around 350 years old. Its reflection on the surface of the water gives the illusion of a dragon emerging from the depths. Mr. Turton then introduced ways to appreciate Bonsai more deeply. So with Bonsai, there's kind of a best way to look at them, a best way to fully appreciate them as a piece of art. So Bonsai are supposed to be these large trees in nature condensed into a small pot, and by looking at them, you're meant to imagine a large tree in nature. So for this, Bonsai are actually given a front side and a back side, and by looking at the Bonsai from the front, you can appreciate it more properly as a large tree in nature. So often the Bonsai from the front will be bending down slightly towards the front, and they'll also open their branches out quite wide to kind of look like, they're kind of opening their arms for you to greet you. Also, so once you have determined which side is the front, then you need to be able to look at the tree as a large tree in nature, and the best place to do that is from the front, of course, but also from down below. So if you could come with me and crouch down, look at it from below, and you can see it as a large tree in nature. You can see it like a big tree, and you can also see like, I feel like lots of the texture is really down there. In Bonsai, the most visually striking angle is known as the front. At the same time, the back, which creates a sense of depth, also plays an important role in adding complexity and character to the piece. By viewing a Bonsai from its front and slightly from below, one can experience the sensation of standing beneath a towering tree. Each Bonsai reveals different shapes and expressions, offering a variety of perspectives to enjoy. It's not just the overall shape that makes a Bonsai beautiful. Take a closer look at the roots, the trunk, the branches, and the leaves. Each part has its own story to tell. So often with Bonsai, you'll notice that a few of them have these very white parts of the tree. So if it's on the branches, we call that a Jin, and if it's on the trunk, like here, we call that a Shadi. These parts of the tree are actually fully dead, fully withered, but the tree itself is still alive, of course, as it still has these very lush green leaves on it. But these dead parts will come out in nature quite often, so often when a tree is in the wild, it'll be exposed to very strong winds, and that'll kill parts of the tree. But Bonsai artists will also create it themselves by carving off parts of the tree. So this one here, this very old thousand-year-old Bonsai here, part of it became quite weak as it got older, and so to kind of utilize those parts, the Bonsai artists artificially created some of this Jin and Shadi on it to kind of utilize those weaker parts. The oldest Bonsai in the museum is a Yezo Spruce named Todoroki. This tree here is an Yezo Spruce. It's actually a thousand years old. So this is the oldest Bonsai we have in the museum. As you can imagine, a thousand years is a very long time. But as a Bonsai, it was actually taken from the wild about a hundred years ago. So actually, it was a thousand years old as a tree in general, but it was taken from the wild about a hundred years ago and then turned into a Bonsai from there. When Bonsai trees are this old, like a thousand years, is it you have to treat them more delicately when you move them over? You do have to treat them very, very delicately, yes. I mean, you can see just from looking at this tree here, the branches are quite brittle on it. A few of them are actually, they've got some dead branches there, but that adds kind of the flavor of the Bonsai. It makes it feel older. It gives it more dignity and elegance to it, you might say. These two visitors are such passionate Bonsai fans that they even take Bonsai classes. How do you like it? Oh my gosh. It's like being in a candy store, you know? It's just like each one is so unique and so beautiful and you think about all the time and effort that goes into shaping these and nurturing them and it's just, it's really something special. They happily shared photos of the Bonsai they've grown on their own. This is my before, this is my little Sequoia forest and this was when I started my trimming that day and then that's a picture of my work and my tools and how much I took away and my finish. My baby, baby forest. Oh my god. Now I want that forest. That's one day, one day. I have a lot of work to do. It's so inspiring. It's amazing. I think the diversity of the trees, to be able to see so many different types of trees in one place, you know, in some places in Los Angeles we go, they might have 10 Bonsai and that's it and this is like everything. It's the encyclopedia of Bonsai right here. I think for me, it's bringing the forest into my one little space like nature, bringing nature to that moment. Living in a city, it's great to have a disconnect, disconnect from the city and connect to nature. For me, it makes me slow down, you know, and really look in a way that I don't do in my normal life. You know, you have to really look every day and see the changes and so for me, it's like a practice. Yeah, a practice. It's so true. What do you think is about bonsais that attract tourists and people from around the world? I think people really do and it's just a part of a traditional Japanese culture along with many other, you know, very traditional art forms. So people like how through bonsai, you can kind of see that it's been passed down from generation to generation. You can see people, you know, kind of working together with nature on this art form through the generations and also they, I think a lot of people like using bonsai to kind of feel nature and reconnect with nature. Do you see there being like an increase in popularity of bonsais in the coming years or do you think that's currently happening? There's definitely been an increase, yes. There was a big boom in the end of the 20th century, mid to late 20th century. It died down a little bit after that but in the past decade or so, it's been really growing again. So we're seeing more and more people coming all over the world just to see bonsai. So there's been quite a few that we've probably even seen today here in the museum. So about 20% of our guests now are actually from abroad. That's quite a large number for a Japanese museum. Although Mr. Turton is now very knowledgeable about bonsai, surprisingly, he only began to engage with bonsai after coming to Japan. So I didn't actually have much of a connection to bonsai before I came here but through this job here as a translator, interpreter and whatnot, I've really had a deep connection with bonsai. So yeah, it's really nice to see bonsai every single day and be able to see the seasons kind of change all the time through that. So right now, it's cherry season so I can see the cherry blossoms through the bonsai. Right now and in the next coming months, I'll be able to see more and more leaves come on the bonsai again as we get deeper into spring and into the summer. I think a lot of people don't realize that bonsai are not just a separate type of tree. They're actually just a regular tree in nature that's just been condensed into a very small pot. So it was quite shocking when I first came here but what was quite interesting to me was knowing that people go and hunt for bonsai in the mountains. So people go deep into the mountains and some very remote areas all over the world these days and they'll look for trees which have grown in quite interesting ways but haven't been able to fully grow due to their environment just like trees kind of growing out of cliffs. People will take them and turn them into quite impressive bonsai. That's quite an interesting fact. Most people don't know. Bonsai, a living art nurtured through time as people and nature engage in silent dialogue. In the next chapter, we introduce the Omiya Bonsai Village, the place where this art has been carefully preserved and cultivated.