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Toshidama Japanese Prints

I suppose that if you were to ask most people about traditional Japanese culture, they would talk about geishas and samurai, sushi, kimonos and bonsai trees. It’s likely though that few people would know much about the bonsai tree and probably would not have seen one. In many ways, however, the bonsai is a very good illustration of Japanese cultural concerns… its roots are in zen – the contemplation of nature – but primarily it is an art form that is about controlling nature, packaging nature if you like and this fits very well with the traditional Japanese psyche. The word comes from bon meaning a tray and sai meaning planting. The oldest known bonsai tree is 500 years old and is in the Tokyo Imperial Palace; incredibly there is a record of it being cultivated in 1610 by Tokugawa lemitsu. The hobby is quite popular here in the UK…

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