Bonsai Masters Focus On Minature Trees

Eight people who practice the almost forgotten art of sharing form the essence of the Kauai Bonyu Kai club.
These eight people share one common trait - they love the Japanese art of cultivating miniature trees known as bonsai, and what started out as talk-story sessions has emerged into a club that one member said, "raises the level of bonsai to a higher level."
The eight had their bonsai trees on exhibit at the Kaua‘i Museum Friday. They are scheduled to be on hand today from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Abraham Machado, the organization's sensei was on hand Friday along with Sylvia Fujii, Eddie Levinthol, Tandu Sivanathan, Claude Joseph, and Sam Lee as they greeted visitors to the special exhibit, and in many cases, accompanied the visitors, providing a specimen-specific tour that wound from inside the main lobby of the museum and emerged to the interior courtyard that had a portion transformed into a scaleddown Zen garden.
"We wanted to give a feeling of the Orient and the serenity," Fujii said of the garden that Lee said took club members two days to construct.
"It's all related," Levinthol added as he showed off a rock that was part of a bonsai display. "The rock has a form and that form is part of the bonsai. They're related art forms."
Fujii noted that there are special containers created to house the special rock formations that can be part of a bonsai display, or just stand alone.
A 200-year-old buttonwood tree from Florida is one of the oldest specimens on display, the tree originally sent to owner Lance Laney by a relative several years ago.
Sitting next to the buttonwood display is a 65-year-old corkwood black pine that was grown from seed on O‘ahu, the club members adding that the pine plants could not be brought out of Japan, but the seeds were allowed, thus giving birth to the specimen that had a gnarled bark trunk at its heart.
Unlike the mass market shows where heavy foot traffic easily detracts from appreciating the essence of the bonsai, the Kaua‘i Museum setting allowed spectators to become immersed in the specimen in front of them with Kauai Bonyu Kai members eager to offer information, both horticultural as well as historical, the history of each specimen being as unique as the bonsai itself.
One of the bonsai on display showed roots encircled around a rock, and Levinthol explained that the original ficus came from a lady's rock wall.
He said the lady wanted to remove the tree before it destroyed the wall, and despite attempts to kill the tree with herbicides, the tree continued to grow.
Sensei Machado went to see the tree, shook it a few times, and following several key snips at the root system, lifted off the invasive tree to begin life as a bonsai.
Levinthol said that bonsai is a continuing art form that is always changing. He noted that fast-growing plants like the ficus make it easy to change. "Front becomes back, back becomes front. It always changes," he said.
A demonstration of that statement could be seen in a 15-year-old ficus "forest" owned by Joseph who said the original forest started out as 51 plants, and in the process of reaching its state as display, various plants were "fused" together to create singular trunks.
Fujii explained that when they first started meeting, everyone had a lot of plants they were caring for, but since the formation of Kauai Bunyo Kai, everyone has downsized to where they have about 15-20 plants that get attention.
"Abe, Ed, and Tandu live pretty close to each other," Fujii said of the club's birth. "Sylvia, Sam, Claude, and Lance all live on the South Shore, and on occasion would meet with the Kapa‘a trio to share ideas."
Now, the group meets regularly, and a visit by Kenji, a renown bonsai master from Japan, saw the club's name emerge, the Japanese bonsai expert also giving the name "Shoko" to an ironwood bonsai belonging to Levinthol because of the emotion evoked when looking at the 40-year-old specimen.
"We also belong to the Kaua‘i Bonsai Club," Fujii said. But, the different can only be experienced by visiting the exhibit where the talents of the Bunkyo Kai members are carried in the breeze that filters through the array of specimen on display.
The exhibit and club members will be available at the Kaua‘i Museum on Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.
There is no admission charge for the bonsai exhibit which coincides with the Kaua‘i Museum's monthly Family Day.