On a trip with my family to DC, we decided to stop by the National Arboretum to take in the Bonsai exhibition. It was a cloudy, rainy grey day, so I was not inclined to walk outside for long stretches. We had to weave around to figure out where the bonsai were located. Early indications were this was a nice outing, but the displays were few and far between.
If you are unfamiliar, bonsai is the art of replicating a miniaturized scene in nature. The best bonsai, whether a single tree or a multi-plant and rock landscape composition, makes us take notice and stop us as they catch our experience and imaginations to show us something new. (from Bonsaiempire.com)
The first few bonsais got my attention, and then they blended together. After a particularly lovely stretch of bonsai trees, I started to turn around. I was ready to head home.
Then one of my sons approached me and excitedly asked, Mom, did you see the tree that survived Hiroshima? That got my notice. I knew which one he was talking about when he described it. I had seen the bonsai, but I hadn’t really looked at it because I had just seen another white pine, and to me, this bonsai was just like the other. Nothing worth pausing on in the rainy cold until I heard the story. Then I needed to find and see the tree again.
From its placard, I read – “If trees could talk, this one would tell a remarkable tale. Since the 17th century, five generations of the Yamaki family tended this tree in Japan. Noted bonsai artists, the Yamakis lived in Hiroshima, where an outdoor nursery filled with priceless trees was attached to their home.
On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Yamaki family and their bonsai survived the United States’ atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Thirty years later, bonsai master Masuru Yamaki offered this tree, one of his oldest and most precious, as part of a gift from the people of Japan to the people of the United States in honor of America’s 200th birthday.
Today, this remarkable tree and symbol of goodwill and friendship welcome visitors to the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. Here it does what bonsai are meant to do: speak to each of us in a very personal way.”
I spent some time standing there reflecting on the care and attention this tree had. This tree was so valued that it had received care for virtually every day of its almost 400-year-long containerized life. How many different shapes and forms had it had until it reached this one? What an incredible gift for these generations of bonsai masters to give this tree as a gift to the people who had dropped a nuclear bomb on their land. (no matter the justification) What an echo of another story – a long (almost in our human understanding eternal) life threatened with a horrible act of violence and, in return, a given as a gift of reconcilation to the offender.
Even to the untrained eye, particular bonsai can make you stop and pause to take it in, but a story changes how you see everything about it.