A Short History Of Bonsai

Kokan Shiren (虎関師錬), (1278–1347)

Rhymeprose on a Miniature Landscape Garden

     What I liked to do forfun when I was a child was to gather up sacks of stones and pile them on atable near the window high and free. When I reached middle age, I felt ashamedof doing this and so I stopped, becoming like any other ordinary person, obtuselike a brick. Finally, I have reached decrepit old age, and I particularlydislike the sound of children’s games in the summer. So I had the childrengather up stones in the corner of the wall. I brushed them off and washed them,preparing a green celadon tray with white sand on the bottom. The result waspoetry that would lighten your heart. The landscape lent a coolness to the airand dispelled the heart. 

     A visitor saw it and exclaimed, “Okay, okay, but it seems alittle bald, doesn’t it?”


   I responded,“You see a pile of stones and fail to see the mountains. The marvelous thingabout miniature landscape gardens is that they are imitations of mountains andstreams. The base is made to look flowing waves and the cliffs are made to seemcovered with vegetation. Sometimes you can see miniature gnarled pine or knobbyplum. You might see unusual blossoms or strange new shoots from their trimmedbranches. Of course you will discover the utter vexation of your creationswithering and wilting due to carelessness of slow watering and tending. If youfail to exert yourself, then you will simply fail to fashion a magnificentmountain and a smaller world among the smaller mounds and hills.

     “Years ago I climbed tothe top of Mt. Fuji. The climb took three days. For two days I passed throughareas of great trees and forests, but on the third morning there wasn’t a bladeof grass to be seen! At that point there were only great boulder-like cliffs andpurplish-red stones. I was like this for a number of miles until I reached thepeak itself. Of course Mt. Fuji is not unique in this respect as all peaks arewithout vegetation. People who climb mountains do not dislike the so-calledbaldness; rather, they love the sense of height.

    “Thesestones then, just a number of inches tall, and this tray roughly a foot across,they are nothing short of a mountainous island rising from the sea! Jade-greenpeaks penetrate the clouds and are encircled by them. A blue-green barrier,immersed in water, is standing straight up. There are caves as if carved in thecliff sides to hide saints and immortals. Jetties and spits flat enough andlong enough for fishermen. The paths and roads are narrow and confined, yetwoodcutters can pass along them. There are lagoons deep and dark enough to hidedragons.

    “So is it not fitting that I guard against weeds, carefullywatching and laboring over the thing, taking delight in its total subtlety? Doyou dislike the baldness of the small mounds and hills? Am I oblivious to thebareness of just the peak? I sometimes pick a flowering branch and place it ina peak or in a ravine. The alternations of plant life, their blooming in themorning and fading in the evening, are the splendor of the four seasons withtheir countless transformations and myriad changes! So therefore I say that itdoesn’t have to be bare, and it does not have to be lush.

     “Another thing, do youthink this miniature landscape is big? Do you think it is small? I will blow onthe water and raise up billows from the four seas. I will water the peak andsend down a torrent from the ninth heaven! The person who waters the stonessets the cosmos in order. The one who changes the water turns the whole seaupside down. Those are the changes in nature which attain a oneness in my mind.Anyway, the relative size of things is an uncertain business. Why, there is avast plain on a fly’s eyelash and whole nations in a snail’s horn, a Chinesephilosopher has told us. Well what do you think?”

    My visitor got up fromhis seat and made his excuses. He saw that these stones purified my senses andpurified my intellect. He realized that events are really not what they seemedand yet they enriched me. I told him that he only understood what he perceivedwith his own eyes and did not understand my point of view at all. I asked if hewouldn’t like to sit for a while longer and study the matter afresh. He said hewould, but there were no waves for him. 

 

     He said nothing moreand I was silent. After a while my visitor left without another word.



—Saihokushu, ch. 1,pp. 1–2.