Page 18 - Ebook bonsai for beginner
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JAPAN - During the Kamakura period, the
period in which Japan adopted most of
China’s cultural trademarks, the art of
growing trees in containers was introduced
to Japan.
The Japanese developed Bonsai along certain
lines due to the influence of Zen Buddhism and
the fact that Japan is only 4% the size of
mainland China. The range of landscape forms was thus much more
limited. Many well-known techniques, styles and tools were developed in
Japan from Chinese originals.
It is believed that the first tray landscapes were brought from China to
Japan at least twelve hundred years ago, as religious souvenirs. A
thousand years ago, the first lengthy work of fiction in Japanese included
this passage: “A [full-size] tree that is left growing in its natural state is a
crude thing. It is only when it is kept close to human beings who fashion it
with loving care that its shape and style acquire the ability to move one”.
The first graphic portrayals of these in Japan were not made until about
eight hundred years ago.
One of the early images of Penjing in China
All things Chinese fascinated the Japanese, and at some point the
Chinese Chan Buddhism also was imported and became Zen Buddhism
