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from the blog
The Nebari Of The Kokufu
The Kokufu show is a goldmine. You can walk through it or flip through a show book and realize you’re just looking at the stands. Or the branch setting. Or the pots. In this year’s Kokufu I took some closeups of the nebari. Here’s a handful of them. Japanese Maple with a wide, fused nebari. […]
Japan 2026: Last Notes
A few final stories from my Japan trip. The first hour in Obuse was bittersweet. You might recognize this tree from a photo in Post-dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk. Walking home after a long day I’d pat its trunk or raise my fist passing under it, and say some version of, you […]
2026 Kokufu-ten: Part 2
Many thanks to Evan Cordes, Carmen Leskoviansky, and Masaki Shimada for these photos of Kokufu-ten Part 2. The Kokufu is well-known to showcase impressive, thick-trunked, dizzyingly developed old bonsai. I’ve included some of those meat and potato trees, but whimsy also shows up here and there. In this Part 2 I’ve included some of that. […]