20100513 Tokyo Bonsai Museum Treats Tiny Trees Like Works of Art

SAITAMA, JAPAN (DPA) – At a newly built museum in the serene suburbs of Tokyo, some of the nation’s best, most artistic and expensive miniature potted trees are on display.

The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum opened in late March near the Bonsai Village, often called a “sacred place” of bonsai. Organizers say this is the world’s first publicly run bonsai museum.

The museum showcases various styles and species of trees, including Japanese five needle pine, Japanese maple, Japanese juniper, Korean hornbeam and Chinese quince. Some of the tiny trees blossom and bear fruit and their leaves change color in autumn.

With about 40 fine bonsai works on display at the museum’s outside garden, visitors can enjoy the trees from various angles in the same way they can appreciate sculptures, says Toshiyuki Okuma, curator of the museum.

“It is you who can decide how you take a look at them,” he says.

While that is considered to be unconventional, the museum also has a more conventional way of exhibiting bonsai works in its collection gallery. Visitors stand right in front of bonsai and take a look.

The museum also exhibits bonsai-related traditional artworks, including bonsai pots, suiseki (stone art) and old paintings such as ukiyoe wood block prints that depict bonsai.

Outside Japan, bonsai is known as an ancient Japanese art, but is not regarded as “art” within the country, Okuma says. “Things such as bonsai and ikebana [Japanese flower arrangement] have been long considered to have deviated” from what Japanese define as art.

It is believed that the absolute precondition for any art is that the uniqueness of an artwork at the time of creation is kept permanently, Okuma says. “Thus, it is impossible to regard bonsai as art in that sense.”

Still, this is called an “art museum” and it treats bonsai as a popular live art.

Many Japanese people still think of bonsai as a hobby practiced by old people. But, Okuma says, more young people are becoming enchanted by the healing power of a miniature potted tree.

And while many Japanese people may not be aware of this, bonsai has grown popular abroad, especially in the United States, Australia, India and some European countries, he says.

“One country’s setting and cultural background could gradually alter bonsai while it gains in popularity there. I believe we also need to study this,” Okuma says. “If you try to keep up a tradition as it is, it will die out.”

That’s why, the curator says, “we would like to work with overseas bonsai researchers and would like the museum to be recognized as an international research center for bonsai.”

The local government in Saitama city also hopes the museum will attract more tourists from home and abroad and reinvigorate the region’s economy as well as the bonsai industry.

To get to the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, take an Utsunomiya line train and get off at Toro station. Walk for five minutes from the station. Entrance fee is 300 yen ($3) per adult. DPA