Bonsai Creation and Tea Ceremony at Master Kunio Kobayashi’s Shunkaen Bonsai Museum

An Art Museum Specializing in Bonsai, Founded by World-Renowned Bonsai Master Kunio Kobayashi

Shunkaen is Japan’s first ever dedicated Bonsai museum. With 2,600 square meters of floor space in Tokyo’s southeastern Edogawa Ward, the museum boasts over 1,000 bonsai works on display – not to mention a stately Japanese garden and a number of tearooms in a traditional house-like structure – and attracts 50,000 visitors from all over the world every year. People come most of all to delight in bonsai, but enthusiasts of tea ceremony, kimono, and other traditional fine arts also make up no small part of these.

An iconic traditional “drum bridge” spanning the garden pond, in which majestic ornamental carp loll

Shunkaen’s founder and owner Kunio Kobayashi is a legend in the bonsai world for his unparalleled sensibilities. Thirty-time recipient of the Japanese bonsai world’s most prestigious awards, he is highly sought-after both domestically and abroad by would-be bonsai acolytes. His nicknames include “The Sky-Flying Bonsai Artist” and “The Hundred Million Yen Bonsai Maker,” for his globetrotting work and the shockingly high price that have been paid for his pieces.

Kunio Kobayashi: “I spend 15 hours a day immersed in bonsai, and I never lose interest in it – I’m completely in its thrall”

This Wabunka plan gives visitors the chance to deepen their understanding of bonsai in tandem with the delights of tea ceremony, combining two of Japan’s most iconic cultural traditions.

A Guided Garden Tour, with Master Commentary on a Variety of Unique Bonsai

After a welcome drink and greeting from your instructor, peruse the vast array of bonsai on display in the garden at your leisure. You can use this time to begin formulating a sense of what exact features or styles speak most to you personally. After your free wander, enjoy a second pass through the garden with your instructor as guide and commentator to further develop your sensibilities.

Enjoy viewing bonsai not only in the garden, but inside the traditional “house” structure as well

In Kobayashi’s view, the real beauty at the core of bonsai is the dignity of life itself. These are works of art created of living beings, in which life and non-life coexist as one, and this is what touches the soul. As living things, each has a different size, color, and shape, and evokes emotion in each person differently. Find the one that speaks to you.

Kobayashi declares his philosophical lodestones for bonsai: uniqueness, balance, elegance, and personality

Bonsai Basics: Living Artwork 

After the garden viewing, move on to learning the basics of the craft. What makes a bonsai a bonsai? Enjoy acquiring a range of new knowledge ranging from botany to history, from a master bonsai artist who has studied directly under Kobayashi himself.

A bonsai master with vast knowledge and proven skill elucidates the craft

Once you have the basic theory, it’s time to get hands-on with practice. The species offered will vary with the season, but beginner-friendly types like Japanese white pine (Pinus parviflora) and Chinese juniper (Juniperus chinensis), with their pliable branches, will be on hand. You’ll focus on pruning and wiring branches, two essential techniques for shaping bonsai beautifully. Feel your emotional connection with the plan before you grow as you work with it.

By tending and caring for your bonsai, you can truly feel its destiny become entwined in yours – a communion not unlike that between close family members

Bonsai artists frequently seek to express the natural beauty of landscapes they have encountered in their real lives. Think of mountains or fields or other natural features that have moved you in the past, and envision recreating their beauty.

Tea Ceremony in a Tearoom Adorned with Your Own Bonsai as the Alcove Piece

After working with your bonsai, enjoy a tea ceremony. Japanese tearooms traditionally feature an alcove space referred to as the tokonoma, in which seasonal flowers and art pieces are arranged to give the space character. Here, you can display your freshly crafted bonsai while you sit down to tea. Having the chance to really get to know your bonsai – first as the artist creating it, next as the tea ceremony attendee viewing it – can open your eyes to new perspectives on the craft.

Bonsai take on very different aspects depending on where and how they are displayed

While appreciating the bonsai in the relaxing serenity of the tearoom, enjoy a cup of matcha (usucha thin tea) prepared by your instructor alongside sweet and sophisticated confections.

The graceful choreography of matcha preparation

Bonsai and Tea Ceremony – Two of Japan’s Most Iconic Traditions, Intertwined

Bonsai and tea ceremony were both introduced to Japan from China and took popular root during the Muromachi Period (1336-1573), after which they continued to develop independent of their origins. Both have become popular icons of Japan’s cultural traditions domestically and abroad, and while at first that may appear to be all they have in common, their connection in fact runs much deeper. Plant growth and tea leaves, stillness and motion. Get to know the uniquely Japanese beauty of each directly through all five senses.

This experience aims to bring us into closer touch with the deep well of quiet, moving beauty buried deep within all of our hearts. By bringing it to the surface through your own hands, you may find new doors opened to previously buried or elusive sensibilities. Luxuriate in this enriched aesthetic self-knowledge in an artistically inspiring, deeply atmospheric, and uniquely Japanese setting.

An escape from hectic modern life into bonsai’s therapeutic aura