Masahiko Kimura (木村 正彦, Kimura Masahiko, 1940-) was born in Ōmiya-ku, Saitama, Japan on March 31, 1940 and is a widely recognized bonsai master. His breathtaking sculpting and styling of trees on behalf of that Kyoto bonsai magazine publisher was done using hand and power tools of his own design. His skill with carving deadwood quickly made him well-known in the bonsai community. While his work was at first highly controversial, his energy and vision soon became as respected as his art. A characteristic of his trees is a defined interplay of artistically sculptured deadwood with a smaller amount of more traditionally appearing live wood snaking up from the soil to foliage apex. Many of his trees have a more elaborate starkness than is ordinarily found in the wild, innovatively creative without historic model. (from Wikipedia).

We visited his nursery in 2008 and were allowed to take numerous photos – too many to post frankly – but we thought you might enjoy looking at a few trees we marveled at in his nursery.  Most of this post will be just photos as what is there to say but we wish we had more trees like this in America.

A closeup of the deadwood on this tree.

A very inventive way to create a forest.  This is the aspect that we love about Kimura – his unique view of what can be done regardless of conventions.

The above photo is of another tree’s deadwood.  Do you think it is all natural or is some of it carved?  We tend to believe that some of it is carved but in a very expert way.

We hope that everyone at some point has the opportunity to visit his nursery just about 20 minutes from the Omiya Bonsai Village.  Yoshi was kind enough to arrange a visit for us and we are grateful for him having done so.

These are some of the most beautiful juniper bonsai that can be seen in the world. I would love to see them in summer when their foliage is bright green.  Well we hope you enjoyed the post.

~ Sam and KJ