In Michael’s own words
The following was lifted from Crataegus Bonsai: “My teacher’s juniper from the 2010 Sakafu show has been my favorite since it first came into his studio in 2006, and I was in my last year apprenticing there. The delicacy and naturalness of this meter-high tree has always left me spellbound.

He had clients calling him nonstop asking about it, one of them was so insistent he called a couple times a day, wanting to buy this tree. But Suzuki was determined to save this tree for the Sakafu, and waited and trained it four years before entering it in the professional show. Some of you may remember this tree from photos in my book Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.”

Greenhouse shot at Shinji Suzuki’s nursery. I like the bark and massive trunk on the pine. It would be interesting to see this tree on display in a few years.

Display area. Also from Suzuki’s nursery.

You could spend your whole life collecting bonsai and never find one as impressive as this. From Michael Hagedorn’s Crataegus Bonsai Seasonals. Here’s what Michael says about this photo… “Initial potting of a large Rocky Mountain Juniper, Winter 2010 Seasonal.” Just a little understated. If this is any indication, it’s worth noting that Michael has his students working on trees of this caliber (and caliper).

Study with one of the very best
My guess is that three days with Michael will be worth months or even years of fumbling about in your backyard in hopes that trial and error will see you through (speaking from painful experience and an embarrassing trail of damaged trees). Not that you shouldn’t fumble around a bit, that’s part of how we learn. But time with a genuinely accomplished bonsai artist and teacher can do wonders for your fumbling, and your bonsai.

Seasonals
“The Crataegus Bonsai Seasonal is designed for those who are not from the Portland area and who would be willing to travel to learn bonsai. This program is similar to how an apprentice learns in Japan: By working on our teacher’s trees, we study at a higher level. Now in its second year, the Seasonal was created out of requests of students from around the country who were interested in coming to Portland to study.” Continued here…

Ram Lukas rewiring a Western juniper during the Fall 2009 Seasonal.

About Michael Hagedorn
“Michael Hagedorn is a bonsai artist who spent 2 1/2 years apprenticing under Shinji Suzuki of Nagano, Japan. Michael’s art background ranges from painting and drawing to ceramic sculpture and installation.” Continued here…

Michael’s book
Post-Dated, The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk, is about Michael’s time studying in Japan with Shinji Suzuki. It’s a great read about bonsai and cultural craziness in a personal style that reveals Michael’s humanity and intelligence (with more than just a touch of folly). And, you guessed it, we just happen to sell it.

I pulled this distinctive bonsai off of a gallery on facebook that was posted by Francesco Santini. There isn’t much information provided and I don’t read Italian anyway (Free Translation nonwithstanding), so I can’t say much about this tree except that the hollowed out trunk caught my eye.

An unusual tree
I have seen very few trunks that have been so completely hollowed (from side to side anyway, if not in depth). It looks like it might be a Ezo spruce though I could be mistaken. If it is an Ezo, it must be quite old to attain such size as Ezos are very slow growing. I like the first branch, it almost serves as a second trunk and is not a bad little bonsai in itself. Overall, I think that this is a excellent tree with great balance, and would be noteworthy even without the distinctive hollow trunk.

Here’s another tree from the same gallery that caught my eye. Though it’s a juniper, the reddish bark and the deadwood remind me of the Manzanitas in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains.

Pirates
At least one blog has been pirating our posts, lock stock and barrel; but without our links and without any attribution to bonsai bark, or Stone Lantern. If you are reading this on any website or blog that is not ours, and is not attributed to us, then it has been pirated. Please visit us at bonsaibark.com. Thank you.

The Suzuki piece of this puzzle. This poster is also on Santini’s facebook galley. Shinji Suzuki is Michael Hagedorn‘s teacher. Suzuki and Michael have both been featured in Bonsai Bark.

The styling progression on this cascade Shimpaku juniper by Shinji Suzuki is remarkable (you can see the whole step by step progression in our Juniper book). So is the end result. Remarkable and very unusual. Shinji Suzuki styled it when he was 24 years old. I wonder if he would do it differently now.

It’s not just the wild mixed interlocking swirls of live and dead wood…
… nor is it just the very long piece of deadwood that runs through the center like a dagger, all the way from near the top to the very bottom… nor the delicate deadwood branch the floats on top and undulates down into the very center of the cascade…. nor the 360 degree deadwood circle on the right… nor the crazy two piece trunk at the base, that lies flat on the soil with a big fist of deadwood above that, but….

… it’s all those things taken together
Nothing about this amazing bonsai is conventional, except maybe the pot and the stand. You might say the the foliage pads are somewhat normal for a cascade juniper, and that may be true, though you might take another look at their very open spacing the way they interact and move with and against the deadwood.

A not particularly eccentric bonsai. This powerful and tranquil old Needle juniper is probably Shinji Suzuki’s best known tree. It originally appeared on the cover of Bonsai Today issue 63 and also appears in the gallery section of our Juniper book.

Shinji Suzuki
Is world-renowned for his bonsai, both conventional and unusual. If you are interested in learning more about Mr. Suzuki check out Michael Hagedorn’s excellent book; Postdated; The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.

We borrowed this magnificent Sierra/Shimpaku juniper from Michael Hagedorn Crataegus Bonsai site. Michael is the author of Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk.

Reworking a remarkable Weyerhaeuser Juniper
Here’s what Michael has to say about the tree above: “A rangy juniper reworked in a half-day refinement session at the Weyerhaeuser collection in Federal Way, Washington. This 40″ (102cm) tree is a collected Sierra juniper grafted with shimpaku.” You can see the whole post here, which includes the before shot.

Freeze Dried Roots
The roots below are from the bonsai4me website. The comments are Michael Hagedorn’s.

“We’re having a week of overnight freezes here in Portland, Oregon following a few days of bright sun and drying winds. The pots are—for once—drying out.

One of the most dangerous things about freezing weather for bonsai is dry soil. Pots breaking is truly a secondary concern. Bad root damage can occur if there is not water in the pot to insulate the roots when it freezes. Otherwise you get a double whammy—freeze dried roots.

So get out your hoses…or spot water with a can…and protect those roots. If you have frequent freezing in winter storage, then watering should be more frequent than you might think. Freezing has one other side effect…it dries out the soil.

In Japan, Mr. Suzuki would have us try to thaw out the bonsai each winter day a bit, so that we could water them. This is a bit contrary to what we hear in the west. But it makes sense.

Stay warm…”

These roots are from the bonsai4me website. The are most appropriately, the roots of a Crataegus (the name of Michael Hagedorn’s bonsai establishment).

Isao Omachi using the part of the Ichiban blade that is designed for cutting wire.

Isao Omachi’s comments
Here’s part of what Isao Omachi has to say about his Ichiban: “Compared to a normal pair of bonsai scissors, these are light and comfortable in the hand; you barely have to raise your elbow. You can multitask with ease, cutting swiftly through branches and wire… In addition to Ichiban’s unique design and efficiency, any level of bonsai student can have fun using a pair…”

Roy Nagatoshi, Walter Pall, Shinji Suzuki and Isao Omachi
So far Marco has sent us testimonials from Roy Nagatoshi, Walter Pall, Shinji Suzuki and Isao Omachi. I expect more as time goes on and more people become familiar with this remarkable new tool.

You can check out Marco’s site for more on the Ichiban…
… or you can order here

Isao Omachi using his Ichiban for fine trimming.

By agreement with Marco Invernizzi, no discounts apply to the Ichiban.

This Scot’s pine (Pinus sylvestris) by Walter Pall is from the cover of Bonsai Today issue 104. It was presented by Walter as an example of a naturalistic bonsai.

“… too many of these bonsai look like they are made of plastic…”
The whole quote, which was written by Walter Pall, and appears in Bonsai Today issue 104, goes like this: “I have seen that the trend in styling is toward more and more refinement, which often takes away all the naturalness. I find that too many of these bonsai look like they are made of plastic and are not real.”

You be the judge
To my eyes, Walter Pall’s Scot’s pine is a wonderful bonsai. That’s why we chose it for the cover of Bonsai Today. But we’ve also featured some much more stylized and refined trees for covers; trees that we like. Are these trees overly refined and plastic looking?

This page from our Juniper book features a Needle juniper that is famous in Japanese bonsai circles (famous enough to appear on the cover of Kindai Bonsai – Japan’s foremost bonsai magazine – and Bonsai Today issue 63). It was styled by Shinji Suzuki, Michael Hagedorn‘s teacher (Michael is an accomplish American bonsai artist. teacher and author). The California juniper in the upper corner was collected and styled by Harry Hirao, “Mr. California Juniper.”

Feel before you think?
Masahiko Kimura has commented at various times that ultimately bonsai is about feeling. I think that’s true of most things; before we think, we have a basic attraction or aversion (or indifference) to something. Then, we tend to use concepts to explain or justify what we feel. If you agree with this view (or even if you don’t), you might want to try to just look at the trees in this post, without thinking too much, and see what you feel about them.

This wild looking Big cone Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga macrocarpa) belongs to Dan Robinson, a well know American bonsai artist. Here’s what Dan has to say about it on the Elandan Gardens website: “Collected from natural granitic basin high in the Colorado Rockies, this tree, with the helping hand of Larry Jackall, was lifted straight up out of the basin using a crowbar under the bottom branch. The tree was subsequently planted in a granite basin here at Elandan Gardens. Its spiraled bark and dead wood are the result of a genetic mutation.

If want to read more of Walter Pall’s article…
Not only can Walter style great bonsai, but he can make a point in writing. Unfortunately, Bonsai Today 104, where Walter’s article appears, is out of print. But don’t despair, we’ll post quotes from it right here, as we continue to explore this and other related subjects. Meanwhile, here’s another quote to whet your appetite: “A traditional bonsai is ideal; it is abstract. A naturalistic bonsai is realistic, but never totally realistic. There’s always a certain degree of abstraction.”

…or visit his website
Walter has one of the best websites on bonsai.

Here’s our previous post on The Great Debate.

This is the second and final installment of our Michael Hagedorn interview.

Do you collect wild trees? Any advice if you do?

I do collect. And I would definitely advise studying the techniques of taking wild trees with a very experienced collector who has a high success rate. Studying this seriously is better than learning by mistake and experiment—enough have done that already!

The tree pictured above is Sonoran scrub live oak (Quercus turbinella). Michael says of this tree: I collected this oak from a mountain range in eastern Arizona in 1999, at around 5,000 ft. It was growing much like old pines or junipers along rocky breaks, in a ‘captive root’ situation. There were fine roots in a pocket of soil on bedrock. I cut the anchor root, lifted the tree, and it went into a small box. The oak from the start was very vigorous, and one or two years later was in a bonsai pot. The photo is from 2008, prior to its trip to the National Bonsai Show. Accent is a small sculpture that I made in college. The container is from my past life as a potter. To see more of Michael’s trees, visit Crataegus Bonsai.

What are your favorite trees to work with? Have you done much with local varieties?

Mostly working with native trees now, at least in the conifer group. In Japan I used to get out of bed in the morning for Japanese maple and stewartia, and I still work a lot with those. I like juniper quite a bit too, for its abstract qualities. Otherwise, as a rough sketch, I have Engelmann spruce, mountain hemlock, and various native pines and junipers in my backyard.

Do you still make your own pots?

Have not made any since returning from Japan. Still, I often see a tree in my backyard and think, ‘What if I had a pot like this…’ so it might come back in a small way, someday.

Do you have plans for any more books?

Yes, I’m working on something now, not stories and essays this time but about bonsai. Still too early to say what it is exactly, but I’m writing.

You have a chapter entitled “Through a Wash of Zen” that I enjoyed very much. My assumption is that to write this, you must practice Zen. Am I correct in this assumption?

I did meditate some in Japan, but am not a Zen practitioner in any consistent way. It did prove to be a useful tool in that stressful environment. Japanese culture and Zen seem well suited to one another…

Do you miss Japanese food?

Some things. I really miss the bento box we got every noontime. It came on a tiny truck that would be outside the studio about 10 every morning. I still remember the oscillation of that truck, and running out to meet it. The bento was perfect: a good portion of rice, some fish or meat, and a cornucopia of vegetables. It was just the right size and impossible to overeat.

The Japanese actually did many things intelligently this way, for example, there was no super-sizing of portions in the fast food restaurants (which are popular.) I was not a Japanophile, loving everything about Japan, but many things they did admirably. Food was one of them. And yet some of the crazier stories from my apprenticeship seemed to be about food. If raw horse is not your cup of tea—well, it was not mine either—but if you’re curious about that culinary adventure, it is detailed in Post-Dated.

In my last post I wrote a review of Michael Hagedorn’s Post-Dated; The Schooling of an Irreverant Bonsai Monk, a book I consider to be an important and unique contribution to English language bonsai literature. You could say that Post-Dated is in fact literature, as distinguished from the how-to genre that most bonsai books fall into.

In addition to being a very accomplished writer, Michael Hagedorn is a first rate bonsai artist. His work appeared in the Kokufu show in Tokyo (Kokufu is the pre-eminent bonsai show in Japan) in 2004, 2005 and 2006, and Mr. Suzuki (Michael’s teacher) honored him with the opportunity to wire two trees that went on to win a Kokufu Prize and a Prime Minister Award.

This interview is in two installments. Stay posted for part 2.

Why Post-Dated?

Post-Dated is a title that the reader will only understand on finishing the book. The last chapter gives a clue to it’s choice.

What do you think is the most important thing you learned in Japan?

I came to believe that bonsai was unlike any of the other creative expressions I’d explored before. It was not modern art. It was not individualistic. It assumed collaboration: by default, with other artists, through time. It was collaboration with a living thing. It was collaboration with a tradition. This was all new to me and, honestly, disorienting. But I came to love it and find a lot of excitement and joy in being a part of that larger surround. I guess anything where we feel part of something larger is a valuable thing, and studying bonsai in Japan was that for me. And I think all bonsai activity has that potential. There, here, anywhere.

Can you say something about Japanese and North American bonsai; the relationship and how it is evolving?

There will probably always be a parent/child relationship there. In that sense Japan is the parent of any country that is interested in bonsai, as China was to Japan long ago—and ‘overtaking’ Japan is unlikely. Bonsai work in Japan is probably evolving faster than is generally known. They are very inventive, and seem to have the best balance of holding on to things that worked well and keeping an eye out for some new way. For a traditional art this attitude works better than our ‘throw out everything with the dishwater and start again’ impulse. And so I see their work progressing steadily whereas our progression is more erratic and dependent on individuality more than community. But I’m generalizing too much. The bonsai community in North America is coalescing, and that is very positive.

Do you think a distinctly N. American style is developing?

I do not see this, unless one can call a group of individual styles a group style. I don’t. There is an impatience I think for us to see this sort of thing. We are used to being leaders in so many fields—medical, university, technology, etc.—that it is almost a reflexive that we should assume a singular voice in bonsai too. But our work in a ‘tradition’ does not seem as strong as our work outside of one. Perhaps it’s our social structure, or maybe what we value: eclecticism.

Would you like to go back to Japan and study some more. Perhaps with another teacher?

I will be returning to study with my master, Shinji Suzuki. In bonsai one does not generally study with more than one teacher, that is, if you have studied at length with that person. A month here and there has been done by many people, Europeans in particular. But once you start calling a teacher ‘master,’ things change. That is a very special relationship that is broken by studying elsewhere. Your master becomes responsible for your welfare, and you can see how that sort of thing can get confusing for a culture centered on relationship hierarchies. Who is responsible for so and so when they are studying with everyone? So they prefer to keep it simple.

Tell us about your teaching these days. What do you enjoy about it? What don’t you enjoy? Are you working mostly with more advanced
students? Beginners? A mix?

Ah, it’s a wonderful challenge. I like the diversity of people who seem drawn to bonsai. And it is gratifying to see students get excited about taking things to another level. I’d say the only hard part is teaching in a workshop type of situation where the concept of a ‘good tree’ is difficult to teach. It is almost like trying to understand Michelangelo’s ‘David’ from photos. I was thirteen when I saw the ‘David’ in Italy and discovered that it was huge. He had made his David be a giant, the real Goliath. I would have never gotten that by looking at a photo, but it hits you in the gut when you’re there. Not book knowledge. Likewise, we can’t really learn the essential points of bonsai from reading, and we can’t learn what a good tree is by seeing a photo or talking about it—we have to see it in person. So I’ve been changing my style of teaching a bit. I prefer to be teaching the way I learned at my master’s place, by standing in front of a good tree. I think this is the best way to learn. We learn ten times as fast. So I am working on gathering a ‘teaching’ collection so that I can teach from my backyard.

I work with both beginners and advanced students. Some of the advanced students end up becoming beginners again, as my techniques are new to those who began bonsai by reading about it. There tends to be a lot of starting over with my students.

Stay posted for part 2.

I first read Post-Dated at 30,000 feet; Boston to SFO. By coincidence, the man sitting next to me was reading Thoreau’s Walden, a book usually confined to students and scholars (and everyone else’s bookshelves). He was well past his student years and turned out to be an engineer who simply loved Thoreau.

I bring this up because Post-Dated has a chapter titled: Restless Spirits: The Usefulness of Henry and Ernest. Henry is, of course, Henry Thoreau. Ernest is Ernest Hemmingway. Michael included them in his book because they both studied bonsai in Japan as young men. Henry was gifted, but Ernest was too impatient to get very far with bonsai, though his reputation as a person who could consume rivers of sake, while telling spell binding stories of bullfights, lost lovers and big fish, is still alive and well in Japan (now, after apologizing to our readers (both of you) and especially to Michael Hagedorn, let’s see if we can refocus).

I loved Post-Dated. Unlike any other bonsai book I’ve ever read (including mine), it’s a genuine page turner. Michael’s gift for story telling, and his sense of humor (mostly at his own expense) are as strong as his gift for bonsai. Here’s a sample:

“I had studied Japanese for a full year before arriving in Japan, and in every class I had attempted, there was a faint halo of a dunce cap sitting on my head. The brain had ossified in my thirties, seemingly unwilling to assimilate anything new of this sort. The difficulties continued while in Japan, where one would think constant verbal exposure would soften this mental geology. This was a conversation in Japanese, at teatime, going over a bit of studio inventory: I comment: “We have long onions and short onions, but no medium ones.”They stare at me, wordless, The conversation continues and leaves me far behind,mulling over long and short onions.“SCREWS! Not onions, screws! Sorry!”

Just the funny and embarrassing stories would make your time and money well spent. But there’s plenty more; including numerous observations for anyone interested in how cultures take different approaches to life’s issue, big and small: “Tachi (another apprentice) got a lecture today from Mr. Suzuki, again, a drilling about placement of branches and arrangement of shoots. I sensed the tension although I was in and out with various tasks …. The next day Mr. Suzuki took me aside and said that he is very hard on Tachi to strengthen his spirit, that it is difficult to have a weak one in this business… I do not envy the expectations that lead to a lifetime of stress in Japan. In the U.S. we allow life itself to temper the spirit; in Japan, your teacher does it. Up to the age of thirty Japanese are considered tamago, eggs, and teachers are expected to break their students open, and prod their insides.”

Mr. Shinji Suzuki, foreground, and his other apprentice, Tachi.

As you might expect, bonsai stories are woven throughout, with valuable lessons in the Japanese way of bonsai (which, though some Westerners feel is overly concerned with detail, really works; the proof being in the pudding). Here’s one of many:

“In the prepared pot, I poured a half inch of granular soil, and he (Mr. Suzuki) chastised me, “Dame!” (pronounced dah-may) Not good! “This maple is old and has thin twigs, so don’t add the chunky soil to the bottom. Finer soil. Dame! “

When I read this, a light went on in my all-too-often thick-skulled head and I remembered something I once knew. Aha! That explains why some old bonsai mavens use finely screened, small particle shohin soil on their older fully developed trees. Fine soil equals fine roots. Fine roots support fine twigs. Of course!

As reread this, I don’t feel I’m doing Michael Hagedorn and Post-Dated much justice. There’s a bigger story that Michael captures and communicates so well. It’s about life as an apprentice in a baffling and sometimes wonderful world, and beyond that what is real and unreal in this human realm where people stumble along, styling beautiful bonsai while sticking both feet in their mouths and then sharing the outrageousness of it all with humility (not far from humiliation), honesty, and best of all, a great sense of humor.

PS. There really is a chapter about Thoreau and Hemmingway, and the man next to me really was reading Walden. Now, you may not be so impressed with this, but seriously, when was last time that you and the person next to you were both reading about Thoreau and one of you was reading a book about bonsai?

Post-Dated: The Schooling of an Irreverent Bonsai Monk
By Michael Hagedorn
Crataegus Books, Portland Oregon
Softcover, 216 pages, $14.95