Half the Day is Night

I don't suppose a person's life ever goes as expected. We can't know our fate beforehand. There is no crystal ball to show us what will be, no oracle to illuminate what lies ahead, no magic map to guide us as we make our way toward our ultimate destiny. We can dream, hope and pray for the story of our life to play out a certain way, or carefully plan in great detail the path it should follow. But the true track of our days is revealed to us only at the end, when all our days are spent.

Yuji Yoshimura had the gift of visualization but he was not a prophet. He was perceptive and smart, and in his day had the daring to act on his intuition, which for a while made him a pivotal character in a larger evolving story. He also had the energy and drive to put his shoulder to the wheel of events and shove it hard in the direction he wanted it to roll. In the end, however, Mr. Yoshimura's life did not go entirely the way he desired. His life was full of adventure and achievement, but it was also full of disappointment and loss. As his days dwindled, he seemed neither fulfilled nor happy. As I came to witness in those few days I spent with him toward the end of his life, Mr. Yoshimura was too often bitter about how it had all gone.

One source of his unhappiness was the condition of his health. Mr. Yoshimura was seventy-four at the time of my study visit with him, although he could have passed for ten years older than that. He had spent the fifty years of his professional life working hard. He was never financially comfortable but instead had to hustle all his life to make ends meet. He traveled constantly, which meant he spent too much time living out of a suitcase, generally not conducive to good health. As a younger man he had prided himself on his fitness, but the years and his lifestyle had caught up with him. Mr. Yoshimura at the time I knew him was weak and failing. Over the three days I was with him I saw him consume nothing but coffee, cigarettes, beer and Hungry-Man dinners. He never touched that big basket of fruit I brought him. Gail ate some of the fruit, which she would grab when passing through on her random visits. I ate the rest. Sheepishly at first, but after recognizing it didn't matter, I went at it more freely. I was still a growing boy back then and one Hungry-Man dinner a day was not going to cut it for me.

The first two days of my short stay followed a pattern. The morning started about eight or nine with coffee and Mr. Yoshimura putting me through the bonsai paces. Early afternoon he gave me an assignment, one day looking at books from his library and the next day studying the plants in his nursery, while he went to take a nap for an hour or two. When he came back around we talked about whatever I'd been up to and then it was back to intensive bonsai practice. After night fell it was Hungry-Man time, when the drinking of bonsai-beers commenced. From then on it was all talk — reminiscence and story-telling, mostly, with me listening, mostly, asking questions when it seemed appropriate and answering a few when asked. Those conversations ran into the early hours of the morning. We developed a comfortable rapport in remarkably short order. I never forgot I was in the presence of a living legend, but as I encountered the reality of a frail old human being, my view of him shifted to the degree that I felt more naturally at ease. Mr. Yoshimura played the part of the venerable old master late in his life and I was the younger acolyte eagerly seeking wisdom. Only we were not characters in a story, but living embodiments of that type of relationship, two people whose paths had crossed at a certain place and time and somehow there was a connection that was as deep and meaningful as it was brief. The long road was ending for Mr. Yoshimura and he knew it. I was just starting on my bonsai journey, with a long road stretching out before me and he saw this too. That was why he spent so much time talking to me about the future of bonsai at the Arboretum, the future of our collection and my future as the person who was to build and shape something great and original. 

When Mr. Yoshimura wasn't preparing me for the future, he was looking back over the decades of his own past, trying, I think, to discern why things went the way they did. He spoke of episodes from all different phases of his life, from the distant days of his youth up to the most recent years. There were pleasant, even touching anecdotes fondly recalled, sometimes including people I had come to meet and know. But many of the stories took a negative turn, degenerating into conflict and disagreement. It seemed to me he was rummaging through his memories, searching for a way to line them up that might produce a better outcome but always ending in frustration: From the time I was a little child my life has always been about bonsai. My father was very strict, he made me work hard all the time and it was impossible to satisfy him. He scolded me for getting attached to any bonsai in his nursery because it was a business and everything was for sale. I did things my own way. I sacrificed everything for bonsai — my home, my family, my health. I gave everything but people want to take advantage of me. I have not been treated fairly!

When I spoke with Janet at her house only days earlier, she told me a few things about Mr. Yoshimura's personal life that I had never heard before. That was the first I remember hearing about his wife and children — how he left them behind in Japan when he made his big move to America, how they followed him a few years later but it didn't work out. Janet also spoke of the fallout among his professional bonsai peers in Japan. It seems Mr. Yoshimura rubbed some people the wrong way, first by teaching bonsai to foreigners and then by selfishly abandoning family obligations to set out for greener pastures. I would hear more about this subsequently from other sources. When I was in Japan studying with Susumu Nakamura two years later, he diplomatically explained that in Japan Mr. Yoshimura was "a controversial figure." Recent developments suggest that Mr. Yoshimura's contribution as an important agent in the spread of bonsai from Japan to the West is now recognized and respected in his country of birth. But during his lifetime, as Mr. Yoshimura himself would eventually acknowledge to me, there was strong sentiment against him in Japan.

He was not universally loved in America, either. So much of what I might offer here as evidence was unknown to me when I was having my experience with Mr. Yoshimura. In the years that followed I would hear many stories when people came to know of my connection to him. Once the Arboretum brought in a well-known guest artist from California who told me, "If Yoshimura had lived in California he wouldn't have even been included in the top ten of California bonsai artists!" This statement was ludicrous on its face, but it accurately reflected the level of animosity Mr. Yoshimura came to know in certain bonsai circles. Mr. Yoshimura was charismatic but also strongly opinionated: When it came to bonsai his way was the right way and people who didn't see it that way were wrong. That sort of attitude wears thin after a while. Mr. Yoshimura ultimately alienated some people, including people who had once been students and admirers. All the dark gossip about Mr. Yoshimura — that he was tyrannical, arrogant, mean — was not fabricated out of whole cloth. There was some measure of truth to the ugly things people said. I never thought of him in a negative way because he never treated me with anything but kindness and patience. I caught glimpses of that dark side, though, and heard tales enough over time to know there had to be at least a little fire behind all the smoke.

It was the third and final night at Mr. Yoshimura's. The next day was to be given over to the creation of a new forest planting bonsai for the Arboretum collection, at the conclusion of which I would begin making my way home. By now I felt completely comfortable with my old teacher, like we had been good friends for a long time. He gave me reason to think he enjoyed my company. I think we were both aware that this was the last late-night talking session we would have for a while, at least, so we carried it on even later than usual. The flow of conversation eventually diminished and the spaces of thoughtful silence lengthened. We were in one of those quiet interludes and I was just about to say that I needed to be off to bed when Mr. Yoshimura spoke.

"I am looking for a reason to die," he said. His voice was low but he spoke plainly and I heard him clearly. The conversation had not been trending in any unhappy direction so this statement seemed to come out of nowhere and I was struck dumb by the words. He looked over at me and a faint smile came to his lips. "No," he said shaking his head, "not suicide." He paused a moment here and then repeated, "I am just looking for a reason to die."

Words would not come to me. We sat there in the deep silence of the crowded room with the books spilling off the shelves, around the old table where we worked and ate and talked.

"Maybe," he finally said, "when you leave I will die."

My jaw dropped.

Mr. Yoshimura looked right at me, then rose a little in his chair and spoke more loudly, "Then people will say, Arthur —he KILL Yuji!"

At this his face broke into a beaming smile as he cackled with laughter. I laughed too, in relief. But I was all shaken up inside.