Who He Was - Part 1
The time has come for me to talk about Yuji Yoshimura. His name has appeared repeatedly in this Journal, because his influence on me — and, through me, on the Arboretum's bonsai identity — has been profound. But I have not yet told the story of the experience with him that set my bonsai thinking on such a fateful course. In changing the way I thought about bonsai, Mr. Yoshimura also changed the course of my life. You may think that claim is hyperbole when I confess how limited my time in his company was. My period of study with Mr. Yoshimura in January of 1995 lasted only three days. Later that same year he came to see me in Asheville and wound up staying for a week, but my time one-on-one with him then was sporadic and under unfortunate circumstances. In 1996 I spent a few hours one afternoon with Mr. Yoshimura in Massachusetts, which proved to be my last contact with him. That was all we had.
The great impact of the whole sequence of events that constituted my experience with Mr. Yoshimura was a product of particular timing and circumstance. To understand, it is necessary to know the path that brought me to him. Previous Curator's Journal entries have detailed how the Arboretum became involved with bonsai and how the job of caring for the little trees came to me. Key characters in the story — Dr. Creech, Janet Lanman and others — have been introduced. Meeting Mr. Yoshimura at the 1993 World Bonsai Convention and the subsequent petitioning of him to accept me as a student were also subjects of earlier examination in the Curator’s Journal. All that was my journey to him. How he came to be who he was and where he was when our paths crossed is told in the story that follows.
Author's Note: In the following essay I refer to Mr. Yoshimura by his familiar name of "Yuji." This is done for the sake of clarity in differentiating him from his father. In my interactions with Mr. Yoshimura I always referred to him by his formal name and never familiarly as Yuji.
Yuji Yoshimura was born at a bonsai nursery in Japan in February 1921. His father was an apprentice at the nursery, and Yuji was the second born in a family of twelve children. From earliest age the boy was surrounded by and attracted to the cultivation of ornamental plants. His father, Toshiji Yoshimura, eventually established his own successful bonsai nursery in Tokyo. The elder Yoshimura became a central figure in Japanese bonsai, particularly in the late 1940s and early 1950s during the rebuilding of the Japanese bonsai industry. When the Yoshimuras’ first child died, Yuji assumed the position of eldest son in the family. Japanese tradition of the times would have dictated that he’d follow his father’s profession and carry on the family business, and Yuji was raised with that expectation. Toshiji Yoshimura was a strict disciplinarian and worked his son hard. Yuji grew up learning bonsai and the bonsai business as a way of life, helping in all aspects of his father's trade. He did cultivate other interests, however. As a boy in school he studied classical music, learning to play the guitar and violin, and became an avid reader. Yuji pursued these activities all his life. As a teenager he attended and graduated from the Tokyo Horticultural School.
Yuji Yoshimura came of age as World War II began. He was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army and served five years in China, rising to the rank of lieutenant in the cavalry. He loved horses but did not like army life. At the war's conclusion Yuji returned to the family's bonsai business, but then in 1948 he left to start his own bonsai nursery in another part of Tokyo. He married a woman named Kazuko later that same year, and the young couple's first child was born the next. In the 1950s, Yuji Yoshimura was in the thick of the Japanese bonsai world. He was a hard-working professional who participated as a member in a private study group that included others who’d go on to become notable figures in Japanese bonsai in the coming decades. He also was a founding member of the Nippon Young Men's Bonsai Association, a group that often engaged with foreign visitors by acting as guides to Japanese bonsai exhibits like the Kokufu Ten. The interactions with Westerners apparently appealed to Yuji and he made important contacts among the foreigners he met.
It’s warranted at this point in the story to pause and consider the circumstances that existed in Japan in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The defeat suffered by the Japanese nation in World War II was total; its major cities had all been seriously damaged by Allied bombing, its economy was in ruins and the country was under foreign occupation. The social order was in upheaval as war crimes trials were held in Tokyo, the Japanese Army was dismantled and a new, democratic form of government was introduced. For a five-year period the nation of Japan was effectively run by US General Douglas MacArthur, as head of the Allied occupying force. There was great humiliation in this experience, especially for a culture that had long held itself aloof from foreign influence and intervention. Japan had endured terrible physical punishment during the war, and then had to bear up under the shattering psychological consequences of catastrophic loss. That was the reality facing Yuji Yoshimura as a twenty-four-year-old veteran returning to civilian life after the war.
The Japanese bonsai industry, like virtually all other businesses, had to reorganize from the ground up in the aftermath of a disaster that reverberated through every facet of Japanese existence. Yuji's father, Toshiji, distinguished himself at this time in his role as president of the Nippon Bonsai Cooperative. Yuji served under him as treasurer. That arrangement would seem in keeping with traditional societal roles in Japan at the time. The eldest son was right beside his father, following his footsteps. Yet the son at this time also stepped away from his father, striking out on his own by establishing an independent bonsai business in another part of the same city. Why did Yuji Yoshimura not do what would have normally been expected of him in his role as eldest son? There could be any number of reasons, but it’s curious that an explanation for this notable divergence from custom did not make it into the known history of Yoshimura's life.
What happened next was even more unusual. Among the Westerners Yuji met through his bonsai activities was a man named Koehn, a German agricultural diplomat stationed in the Far East. Mr. Koehn had an interest in ikebana and bonsai and authored several English language books on those and other subjects. In 1953 Yuji helped him with a book about bonsai. Meanwhile, Mr. Koehn helped Yuji set up shop as a bonsai instructor to foreigners living in Japan. This was an extraordinary development! Up until that time, bonsai lessons were not available to such people. Among bonsai professionals in Japan there was doubt as to whether foreigners could even understand bonsai, much less do it. Significantly, most of the foreigners living in Japan were there because Japan had lost the war and was in the process of being reconstructed under the influence of outsiders. Many of Yuji's students were Western businessmen, or members of the military, American or otherwise, or spouses of people who were. Yuji Yoshimura was not only teaching bonsai to outsiders, he was teaching to foreign women, and in the context of the time and place that was a revolutionary act.
The young man's bonsai classes for foreigners were a big success. Outsiders were a heavy presence in post-war Japan, and many were fascinated by the strange and exotic culture they encountered there. Hundreds of foreigners learned about bonsai for the first time in Yuji's classes, and some of them returned home carrying an appreciation for the art which they then promulgated in their own countries. Yuji recognized the need for an authoritative book on bonsai for the English-speaking market. Once again collaborating with a foreigner — an English woman named Halford who had been one of his students — Yuji co-authored The Japanese Art of Miniature Trees and Landscapes. This book, originally published in 1957, became famous as the first comprehensive treatment of the subject by a Japanese bonsai expert written expressly for a non-Japanese audience. The book became a seminal bonsai text and remains in print to this day, now sold under the title The Art of Bonsai.
In 1958 the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was interested in bringing a Japanese bonsai professional to America to teach a series of classes. A respected young horticulturist working for the US Department of Agriculture, who’d spent a good deal of time collecting plants in Japan and China, recommended Yuji Yoshimura for the assignment. That man's name was Dr. John Creech. He had been a visitor to Yuji's nursery in Tokyo on numerous occasions and the two became lifelong friends and co-admirers. Yuji accepted the invitation to teach and left his home country, his business and his wife and two children (the second child had been born earlier that year), to travel to a place he'd never been before. His visit was underwritten by a one-year fellowship, but when Yuji arrived by ship to New York City in December of 1958, he was landing in the country in which he would live the rest of his life.
To be continued...