By Ken Schultz

Usually there is an author, but this book is a collection of photographs presented by the Nippon Bonsai Association. It is the consummate coffee table book. There are 188 pages presenting 132 color and 48 black and white photographs of the best bonsai trees in Japan. The book was published in 1989 and presented trees that defined the best bonsai of Japan at that time. The trees are from 15 to reportedly 1,000 years old. The Nippon Bonsai Association claimed 20,000 members from 300 clubs. My faulty math tells me that means each club had about 67 members, about the same as ours. The introduction compares the brief life of animals in comparison to trees. The writer points out that the death of even the oldest tree begins the cycle of life over.

The photographs all appear to be professionally taken. The lighting is just so and there is no clutter in the background. The reader can focus fully on the tree pictured. Each tree is captioned with the common name, style, age and height. This is that can be used as a role model for the trees we are trying to develop into a showstopper. Once you get done ewing and awing the photo section is followed by 30 pages organized into history, appreciation and style of bonsai. The final 20 pages of the book are paragraphs about each of the color plates found on the earlier pages. They report on the history of the trees and discuss the features of its style. I personally would have liked these descriptions on the same page as its photograph because I did a lot of flipping back and forth.