Page 24 - Tạp chí bonsai cây cảnh BCI 2014Q3

repetition, the work can be accomplished without both methods are amazing and informative human
thinking. The student becomes one with his medium, experiences. Nevertheless, a traditional apprentice-
whether it is paint and brush, hammer and chisel, a ship brings a typically Japanese pragmatism and the
musical instrument or a live tree. experience becomes moral-aesthetic.
Kimura also says, “The relationship between master The hierarchical system of student and master func-
and apprentice must be like it was in feudal Japan, so tions in a way incomprehensible to us in the West: the
strict that the student must always accept the opinion teacher disorients you, puts you to the test with deceit,
of the master, even if the student sees a white thing, punishes you, he makes you look bad, assigns impossi-
but his master says it is black, the student must accept ble tasks, tells you things that are false, humiliates you.
it. Only in this way you can grow spiritually, by real- If we read medieval monastic rules, we will find a lot
istically facing the right spirit of doing bonsai.” This of similarity, the feudal methods are based on a deep
phrase, which I wanted as the preface to my book, psychological introspection and human spirituality.
clarifies the difference between the classic Japanese ap- Certainly today it seems incredible that some teachers
prenticeship and modern educational models. It is an still use such methods, but this is the way Kimura, who
impossible dialogue between a feudal mentality and a lost his father in adolescence, was taught by his teacher
modern democracy. Though the differences are great, Motosuke Hamano. He firmly believes in this method.

The relationship
between master
and apprentice
must be like it

was in feudal
Japan, so strict
that the student
must always

accept the
opinion of the
master, even if
the student sees

a white thing,
but his master
says it is black,
the student

must accept it.

22 | BCI | July/August/September 2014