Excellent, excellent! I love history and bonsai history, especially.
BTW, in the recent era, Paradise Yamamoto's art, books and the later animated
dioramas of Mambonsai are probably equally noteworthy with Lisa Tajima's work, (even though he did decline our initial interview request)
http://www.mambonsai.com
http://www.theallineed.com/news/0503/237095.htm
ISBNs escape me at the moment. Oops, found them! They are the numbers in the rightmost column of this Japanese page, beginning with The Mambonsai, Vol 1, ISBN 4167660334
http://www31.ocn.ne.jp/~nisse/mambonsai.html
In a nutshell these
Mambonsai are scenes depicting cultural concerns or fantasies, created with a combination of living bonsai and detailed plastic human & animal figurines (mudmen). They are beautifully photographed and some were even turned into plastic animated models available to the general public. The name Mambonsai is a clever combination of three terms, Man, Mambo and Bonsai. The representation of the first syllable (written with an intentional ambiguity in Katakana) can be pronounced MAM or MAN together with the Kanji for bonsai.
Regards,
Matt