bonsaiTALK Community - View Single Post - Shohin Book a different opinion...

My take on books.....

There are a lot of books out there. Most of them have said no more than each of the others that came before it. Most cover the basics. Nothing wrong with that if thats what you feel your audiance is. An author can't be everything to everybody. I full well understand that point, but heck bonsai basics books have been around in the western world for 50+ years. We did not need another glossy well laid out facsimile of another book from 50 years ago.

Bonsai has jumped light years since the internet and in fact the internet may be doing more harm to the book business than we fathom. I bought the book, and didn't take away anything new from this book with the exception that shohin branches look cool encased in ice!

There is a shohin master out there. He goes by the name of Kyosuki Gun pronounced Kee-os-kee Goon. I have many of his books. For a decade or more Kyosuki drew all the hand drawn step by steps on shohin in the pages of Bonsai Today when it was "Thee" magazine of the bonsai world. Anyone wishing to move forward in shohin bonsai would jump light years having this set of books.

The books are in Japanese but the drawings are like spending a day with a Japanese master. You would really have to be a dunder head to not fully understand what is going on with the photos on how to make a shohin bonsai step by step with drawings showing the process over a period of years. While these are drawings, let me tell you that in some cases black and white photos accompany the drawings and even the individual cracks in the crackle glaze are drawn in. There are no short cuts in the drawings, if there is a root on the trunk its cause there was a root on the real tree right there and you are shown how to deal with it.

The books read right to left like all Japanese books and the books start with seed and how to go from there right down to ending with masterpiece bonsai from one of the best in Japan. Each book contains step by step drawings on about 15 to 20 projects with color plates in the book as well as photos in each project. All this in a 6 x 8 inch formatt a 1/2 thick soft cover for 20.00 per title. I have 5 of the eight in the series. The titles I own are shimpaku juniper, pine, maple, needle juniper and zelcova.

Those five titles for me cover most anything I wish to do in bonai. The zelcova book is interchangeble for elm and hornbeam, while the maple will work on most all maples and other diciduous trees of that nature.

These books cover making bonsai. No recipes for soil, no hyperbole about "what feeling bonsai is supposed to give me". Lets get everyone making great bonsai first and then we can all venture into feelings, wabi sabi, echo's, art, asthetics and 360 degree bonsai.

Bottom line....
Your not going to make better bonsai with Mortens book, but you can with these. They focus on nuts and bolts bonsai, not feelings.

A sample of one project on junipers, 8 pages long. The tree goes thru numerous pots, with instructions on how to prepare the layering pot and how to prepare the final show pot.