History of Bonsai

It is believed the history of bonsai goes back 2,000 years, to China in the Han Dynasty. One legend has it that an eccentric emperor of the period wished to view his entire empire from his palace window, and built a miniature landscape in his courtyard that included all of his land's forests, hills, rivers and lakes. Another theory suggests that landscape artists began making miniature versions of famous rock gardens. The earliest documented proof of bonsai is on the tomb walls of Prince Zhang Huai, who died in 706 AD, and shows a painting of a servant carrying a pot containing a small tree.

Bonsai most likely came to Japan during the Heian period, which ran from 794 to 1185. During this time the Japanese sent emissaries to China to study the arts, law and religion, and brought back many Chinese customs. In China the art form was called pen tsai, or "pot tree," which translated into Japanese as bon sai. Bonsai was at first the dominion of the nobility and Zen Buddhist monks, who felt the trees represented a fusion of nature and man. Although originating in China, it was the Japanese who fully developed the art of bonsai and led to it's eventual popularity in the rest of the world.

By the 14th century, bonsai had spread from the elite to the general Japanese culture, although this form of bonsai would be different from the kind we are familiar with today. Originally small trees were gathered in the wild and kept in small pots outdoors; they were brought indoors to display only on special occasions. Over time the art formed developed such that all but the most essential parts of the plant were removed, a reductionist style that reflected the philosophy of the Japanese at the time. Going into the 17th and 18th centuries, many styles of bonsai developed, each unique from the other.

Until the 19th century, the Japanese had kept their culture isolated from much of the rest of the world. While it is undoubtedly true that merchants and seafarers must have encountered bonsai before this time, it wasn't until bonsai were shown at a Paris exhibition in 1878 that the art form began to spread to the western world. The first major bonsai exhibition was held in London in 1909. By that time there were nurseries developed in Japan for the exporting of bonsai trees. Bonsai also saw a surge in the United States after World War II, when returning soldiers brought back the miniature trees. Today, starter "pre-bonsai" plants may be purchased in a wide variety of garden centers, department stores and nurseries.