Kokufu 2017

[Max]

a level we all aspire to attain....with me it's going to take twice as long

[treeman]

Much like how the join location on twin trunks slowly closes and climbs up the tree as the trunks thickens, so does the join where roots meet the trunk on radial root bases. If you have a good dense spread of roots an maintain it over a long time it will slowly creep out from the trunk an create the plate like base. Like it or not it is a result of a shallow, dense and radial root system maintained over time.

Yeah but this is encouraged not discouraged. It would be simple enough to inhibit this type of development by removing roots as the tree progresses. They even go as far as grafting on seedlings to exaggerate it more.
It can get really ridiculous.......

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One thing about the Japanese culture and Asian in general, is that they sometimes tend to grab hold of some idea or aesthetic principle and take it beyond what would be normally be considered good taste. It quickly becomes a pop culture which is accepted by the mainstream. I'm finding this the more I study modern Japanese bonsai. On the other hand, they also came up with the wabi sabi, which is the complete opposite of this. It's a way of seeing things that really strikes a cord with me. The idea that true beauty lies in the imperfect. This is something that seems to have been thrown out the window in the modern scene. I totally understand the technical skill and the unmatched dedication needed to refine these trees to the level they are, but they are really beginning to repel me personally.

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[treeman]

a level we all aspire to attain....

Not all.

[melbrackstone]

it's a little like over-breeding dogs, I reckon....you get something that pleases the judges of the day, (because of trends,) but the poor dogs can't breathe, their hips don't work, and all sorts of other problems surface...

I'm sure not keen on trees that look like they're melting into the pavement, and I reckon even if I lived long enough to bring a tree to that stage, I'd do what I could to keep the roots separated and defined.

Never-the-less, it's clearly something that is trending, and there'll always be people who love it, and people who hate it... It's very educational to be able to see and discuss these trees!

[GavinG]

As far as I understand wabi-sabi, it is the opposite of showy/show-off/mine's bigger than yours. It's modest, refined, and elegant. Once you start getting competitive, and scoring points, and the man with the biggest wallet gets the best toys, the bigger the better becomes the rule, and the basic aesthetics of quiet refinement and respect for nature go out the window. If you look at the aesthetics of tea ceremony pottery, the original impulse was to find humble, modest implements to quiet the mind and humble the spirit - now collectors pay millions for the objects that are The Best, Most Completely Humble, which just gets silly. In my humble opinion. Which is clearly the best.

And it's certainly not just the Japanese - as MelB remarked on over-bred dogs, where if x is good, 3x must be worth more points in the show ring, and damn the health and welfare of the animal. Italian Greyhounds have been bred for "fineness" to such an extent that they routinely break their legs in normal activities while they're growing up. Persian cats have breathing problems, and so on.

And Jow, with respect those dinner-plates are a recent fashion, just like sumo trees. Not just a result of age in the tree. For me they miss the point.

Gavin

[DavidWilloughby]

Great photos, what an incredible experience it would have been. One day I will get there. Thank you for taking the time to post them up.

Cheers

David

*people have noticed the nebari of the deciduous trees, yet missed the lack of on the junipers.

[delisea]

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[melbrackstone]

lol!

It's great to see that the trees do that when left alone as well....

still, it's not something I aspire to.

[wrcmad]

Regardless of weather you like the pancake nebari or not, it is interesting that there is one reason for it's development that has been glaringly missed here.

What my pictures struggle to give is perspective. The size and obvious age of all of these trees is quite unlike anything you will see in Australia. All of the trees are at least 1 metre high, with some well in excess of that. Some of those maple trunks are 300mm at the base with the fused surface roots adding much more diameter. All scarless, well-tapered, and very healthy.

With such age, the formation of a spreading nebari is a direct consequence (intended or not, aspired to or not) of very good root maintenance techniques combined with grand age. It is well known that every year, girth is added to the base of a trunk, as a direct result of foliage growth above, and in proportion to the allowed volume of foliage growth. This increasing girth can be slowed with good technique (bonsai), but cannot be stopped completely.

This constantly added bulk has to be distributed somewhere. In maples, you have 2 choices:

You can use good technique to maintain a flat, shallow root system, and eventually end up with a pancaking nebari, such as this:

flared.jpg

Or, you can use poor technique, and the added bulk will eventually start to cause “footing” of the nebari, like this:

footed.jpg

You can read about it here: https://nichigobonsai.com/2013/03/05/ne ... r-results/

Thus, the spreading nebari common in the Kokufu pictures is quite revered in Japan because, besides considerably grand age, it shows excellent skill, technique and dedication, carried out over a very long time (sometimes generations). These qualities (quite understandably) are highly regarded in Japan.

It’s not always about one-upmanship, trends, overworking, or novelty-value.

[melbrackstone]

Thanks for the extra info.

[treeman]

Regardless of weather you like the pancake nebari or not, it is interesting that there is one reason for it's development that has been glaringly missed here.

What my pictures struggle to give is perspective. The size and obvious age of all of these trees is quite unlike anything you will see in Australia. All of the trees are at least 1 metre high, with some well in excess of that. Some of those maple trunks are 300mm at the base with the fused surface roots adding much more diameter. All scarless, well-tapered, and very healthy.

With such age, the formation of a spreading nebari is a direct consequence (intended or not, aspired to or not) of very good root maintenance techniques combined with grand age. It is well known that every year, girth is added to the base of a trunk, as a direct result of foliage growth above, and in proportion to the allowed volume of foliage growth. This increasing girth can be slowed with good technique (bonsai), but cannot be stopped completely.

This constantly added bulk has to be distributed somewhere. In maples, you have 2 choices:

You can use good technique to maintain a flat, shallow root system, and eventually end up with a pancaking nebari, such as this:

flared.jpg

I don't know about good vs poor technique or only 2 choices.

Your first example is encouraged by cutting the lower roots very flat as you say ALONG WITH, not touching the any of the roots on the plane of the nebari. The result of repeating this for an extended time is obvious. The roots left have nowhere to expand and are forced together. If however, judicious removal of some of the nebari roots is carried out, this would not occur. It is the due to the fact that none of the roots of the nebari are thinned out early on that we get this development. It is a fashion which can actually avoided if the desire is there. I have read a Japanese writer mention this very fact and encouraged this root thinning to avoid in his words: ''an unnatural appearance''

Your second example is the result of leaving in the tree in too small a pot for too long, and a failure or unwillingness to correct it later. Not so much incorrect root pruning IMO.
So what you refer to as ''good technique'', I would prefer to call A technique.

As for whether it occurs in nature or not is missing the point. (actually it is extremely rare in nature) What we (some of us that is) are looking for is plausibility of the image. Forget about ''IS it natural'' and concentrate more on ''does it LOOK natural''
To my mind I would have to say no... This goes for general branch design as well of course and I must admit, looking at many of my own trees, I'm not satisfied!!

In short, I consider the importance of the nebari to be WAY over emphasized at the moment.

[Jow]

As far as I understand wabi-sabi, it is the opposite of showy/show-off/mine's bigger than yours. It's modest, refined, and elegant. Once you start getting competitive, and scoring points, and the man with the biggest wallet gets the best toys, the bigger the better becomes the rule, and the basic aesthetics of quiet refinement and respect for nature go out the window. If you look at the aesthetics of tea ceremony pottery, the original impulse was to find humble, modest implements to quiet the mind and humble the spirit - now collectors pay millions for the objects that are The Best, Most Completely Humble, which just gets silly. In my humble opinion. Which is clearly the best.

And it's certainly not just the Japanese - as MelB remarked on over-bred dogs, where if x is good, 3x must be worth more points in the show ring, and damn the health and welfare of the animal. Italian Greyhounds have been bred for "fineness" to such an extent that they routinely break their legs in normal activities while they're growing up. Persian cats have breathing problems, and so on.

And Jow, with respect those dinner-plates are a recent fashion, just like sumo trees. Not just a result of age in the tree. For me they miss the point.

Gavin

I can understand that the look is not to everyone's tastes. That's fine, it would be boring if we all liked and grew the same trees. Its like trying to get a consensus on whether highly detailed and or loose (natural?) styling is better. Neither is better, it comes down to personal taste and the aims of the artist.

At the moment all my Kokufu albums are in boxes so i couldn't find the right historic examples but i did find these on the Nippon Bonsai Associations page.

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1959

iwaside73.jpg

1999

These two pics are of a hornbeam which typically doesn't make dinner plate bases but you can see that over 40 odd years development the base has changed dramatically (too be expected really). If this was a trident i would guess it would have the plated base.

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1933

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2001

These two are tridents and you can see the way the bases have fused and 'plated up' over the years.

My take on the popularity of this: I think that plated nebari is a great sign of age and care over a long period of time, much like old bark on a pine. Trees that exhibit this have usually been in training for many many years and this is a direct sign of this.

I see it like how patina builds slowly on a tea cup to the point that the red clay is no longer visible and now only the brown black patina shows, completely changing the original object.

Of course once this becomes a valued trait people will try to enhance it. You often see fake patina on pots for example.

This pot has dramatically changed its colour and is different to the colour it would have been when it was first made a hundred odd years ago.

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Personally, I think that plate nebari is somewhat related to the ideas of Wabi Sabi, as it is a direct sign of the passing of time, of daily care much like the signs of patina that has built up on a tea ceremony cup. It could be argued that patina is an obvious in your face que to the fact that an item is old, much like these nebari often become a focus point.

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The patina is very much a focus on this pot (although someone hasnt seen the value and has tried to clean it off revealing the original colour and intent of the maker)

From a natural tree angle, you can see lots of examples of this happening in real trees, expecially Plane trees.

Here is one from collins st in Melbourne (https://goo.gl/maps/LKotna5jiDo).

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In fact most bizare bonsai can be justified by oddities in nature. Does this make it 'natural'? Personally i think it simply comes down to what is the artist trying to achieve. A representation, an exact copy, or an artistic expression or something else? Are they trying to represent the average of all trees of that species or are they attracted to the weird, or trying to convey a feeling or idea? There is no right or wrong.

Again all a matter of taste.

Personally i like the plate look but can totally understand why others don't.

Joe

[Jow]

Never-the-less, it's clearly something that is trending, and there'll always be people who love it, and people who hate it... It's very educational to be able to see and discuss these trees!

I think its not so much something that is trending (as its about 30+ years worth of work to produce) but more a result of all the trees that have been developed post WW2 that are now reaching close to 70 years of development.

[GavinG]

Thank you gentlemen for your considered and well illustrated debate.

Delisea, thanks for the photos of bases - although they show similar "plating", they are always in proportion to the thickness of the trunk. The ugly and disproportionate excess of the "dinnerplate" bonsai is what jars with me. Similarly Jow with your plane tree - it's still in proportion.

Jow, thanks for the time-lapse photos - I don't regard the base of the hornbeam as excessive, and the trunk and branches of the tree remain graceful and in proportion. A fine tree.

And to be really persnickety (Who'd have thought a bonsai grower would be picky about details?) the pot that you've showed, Jow only shows its age on the inside - the brownish edge on the dark glaze around the rim of the pot is just a standard breaking temmoku glaze, the same as when it was made. It's a beautiful fine wabi glaze, certainly.

We differ, gentlemen. My personal preference is for far rougher roots, probably more in the penjing tradition, with more dynamic energy - now there's another can of worms.

May your day delight you.

Gavin

[treeman]

Hey Jow, Leaving the nebari aside for a moment, if those maple groups are the same, surely you would have to say that the overall quality of the composition has gone way down if we consider gracefulness, elegance, smooth transition in the ramification, overall naturalness, vision, restraint, etc etc ?? To me the 1933 image appears created by a thoughtful master, and the 2001 group by a beginner. I agree there is no right and wrong but there definitely is good and bad (and everything in between of course)
The hornbeam I think has improved in ramification but the quality has pretty much remained. As we know, quality has nothing to do with age...or size for that matter. For example, very old bark on a particular pine is certainly desirable, but it does not follow that it is automatically of higher quality than a younger pine.....If you know what I mean.
I just thought I'd throw that in.