KYUZO  MURATA

The Father of Modern Bonsai in Japan
 
 

This Page Last Updated: February 26, 2001


       Kyuzo Murata was born in 1902 in Takayama City, Gifu Prefecture.  He entered Keio Gijuku University, Tokyo (some 140 miles to the southeast of his birthplace and two miles south of the Imperial Palace), but had to leave without graduating in order to receive treatment for a severe gastric ulcer.

       On his doctor's advice, he then went about twenty miles northwest of the capital "to Omiya, where the water was reputed to have health-giving properties for humans as well as for miniature trees.  Inevitably exposed to the profession practiced by several other residents, Murata tried his hand at it and presently found that he was blessed with a green thumb.  He established his garden there in 1926."  The acre and a half plot was called Kyuka-En, the Garden of the Nine Mists. 1

       In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kyuzo Murata and his associates regularly went to Furukamappu on Kunashiri Island (to the east of the big north Japanese island of Hokkaido). This was the native home of the Ezo spruce (Picea glehni).  The place where they grew is called Yachi, a marshland having a thick mass of accumulated sphagnum moss.  This is an inhospitable natural environment where the land is covered with deep snow from the middle of September until the middle of May, a place where the wind blows endlessly.  Murata and company would pack up the trees they collected about the first or second of September every year and ship them down to Honshu, Japan's main island.  The roots were packed in sphagnum moss, then wrapped in burlap and tied with string.  The trees were then placed in specially constructed boxes for shipping.  They would travel by rail and reach Omiya by the tenth or eleventh of September.  At the time of collecting most only had one or two white living roots showing.  By the time they were transported, and despite the poor condition after they arrived, they would have a profusion of vigorous white roots growing out through the burlap.
       (The roots didn't initially last on containerized trees.  The bonsai master Tomikichi Kato was the one who determined how to rectify that problem around 1928.  During the 1930s perhaps the most prized group of bonsai trees were the Ezo spruce, to be found growing wild in the forests of northern Japan along the tundra zone.) 

       Kyuzo Murata came to serve the Imperial Household in Tokyo in 1931, caring for their magnificent collection of bonsai.

       And he began to assist Masakuni I (Shichinosuke Kawasumi, 1880-1950) in developing additional tools for bonsai.  A well-known manufacturer of flower arranging scissors and medical-use cutting tools, Masakuni in 1919 had established a company to carry Japanese bonsai tools.  In the early 1920s he invented the first shears specifically designed for use on bonsai, and a little later came out with the epoch-making concave cutter. 

       In 1938, Murata exhibited one of his early creations, a thirteen tree Ezo spruce group planting from collected material. 2

       "[The bonsai growers at Omiya] were just beginning to become prosperous again [ -- most had resettled there from Tokyo two years after the great earthquake of 1923 -- ] when World War II broke out.  The draft and the emphasis on raising foodstuffs reduced the number of Omiya growers from a peak of twenty-three [families] in the late 1930s to one, Murata.
       "Although his health made Murata immune to the draft, local officials ordered him to forget about bonsai -- which required full-time care if they were to survive -- and get busy growing rice.  He appealed to the general in command of the district, a family friend, who countermanded the local officials' order with the characteristically Japanese dictum that 'bonsai show the importance of the unimportant.'  Murata was free to give his bonsai all the attention they needed."
       He collected and preserved as many as he could get together from other growers, and got permission to store and house them on his garden plot in Omiya. 
       A large number of outstanding trees handed down for many generations -- but not cared for by Murata or a very few other growers -- were apparently lost in the fiery Tokyo air raids.  To minimize care requirements at Omiya, the bonsai were removed from their pots and planted in the ground.  Watering was done late at night. 3

       Immediately after the Pacific War, the luxury tax on bonsai was so high that it nearly caused the disbandment of the growers at Omiya.
       "[W]hen the war ended, Murata had no money to keep his garden growing and no customers to buy his trees.  He was on the point of taking up some other occupation when, on a November afternoon in 1945, fate intervened.  A jeep containing Lt.(j.g.) Leo R. Ball, of the U.S. Navy, and John R. Mercier, a newspaper correspondent from Washington D.C., drew up to his garden gate.  They were horticultural enthusiasts who wanted to see the famous bonsai village.  After they spent several hours in knowledgeable admiration of the beauties of the garden, Murata took out his Visitors' Book, which had been unopened in four years, and asked them to write in it.  Both men wrote glowing tributes to the garden's beauty.  When Murata had their inscriptions translated, the warmth of the messages left by his country's recent enemies gave him heart to carry on his work a little longer.  Gradually, as more visitors came, he began to prosper." 
       During the Pacific War, the shortage of fertilizers and even of water affected the Imperial Palace's Collection, as well as those almost everywhere else.  Some trees outside of that Collection perished because of this, and many others inside and outside were almost killed off. 4

       From 1949 to 1955, Kyuzo Murata was chairman of the Nihon Bonsai Kumiai (Professional Bonsai Gardener's Association of Japan). 

       He was often in contact with Toshiji Yoshimura, a prominent bonsai and suiseki artist from Tokyo.  At one point, Mrs. Murata introduced a lovely young Omiya lady, Kazuko Nagano, to Toshiji's son, Yuji.  On March 11, 1948 Yuji Yoshimura and Miss Magano were married.  (Yoshimura would go on to make his mark in the bonsai world outside of Japan.)

       Murata was head between 1954 and 1960 of the Japan Union of Bonsai Growers, in which capacity he contributed greatly to the cause of the art.

       Mr. and Mrs. Edward Holsten, two of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's Trustees, returned from a world cruise in 1958 having procured a number of superior specimens from some of Japan's finest bonsai nurseries.  This collection of trees was finally imported in 1961.  Mr. and Mrs. Howard Phipps, Sr., also traveling to Japan in the 1950s, brought back several trees to start the collection that bears their name.  Most of the high-ranking specimens in both collections came from Murata's Kyuka-en. 5

       Now, Lynn Perry was a graduate of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, and also studied in the Dept. of Landscape Architecture of the University of Pennsylvania.  She became the first American to study bonsai with a Japanese master for an extended period of time.  For one or two days a week from 1960 through the fall of 1962, she received instruction from Murata.  After intensive practical and theoretical training, she was awarded a teaching certificate by her sensei.  During this time she wrote Bonsai: Trees and Shrubs, A Guide to the Methods of Kyuzo Murata, which was published in 1964 by The Ronald Press.  While in Japan she also served as a member of the staff of the Agricultural Attaché at the American Embassy in Tokyo.
       Upon her return to the U.S., she was first employed by the landscape architect David Engel, and assisted with bonsai courses at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  She then become proprietor of Suzu-en Bonsai Company (a tool importer in Erie, Pa), lecturing, demonstrating and teaching throughout the country, especially in the East. 6

       Also in 1964, the English publication was made of Kyuzo Murata's Bonsai: Miniature Potted Trees by Tokyo's Shufunotomo Co., Ltd.  (Its twenty-fourth printing would be made in 1986.)

       Seventeen members of the Bonsai Society of Greater New York went to Japan in March 1967 to study for a week with Kyuzo Murata.  The tour had taken a year to plan and coordinate.  The group, including Jerry Stowell, Lynn Perry Alstadt, Marion Gyllenswan, George Hull, and Constance Derderian, flew from San Francisco to Honolulu where they met with members of the local clubs there, and then on to Omiya.  On Sunday night the group had dinner with Mr. Murata and his wife at the Japanese inn were the Americans were staying.  The next morning they walked through the 
gates of Kyuka-en: "Apricots and plums were at the peak of their flowering, magnificent old bonsai with pink and white blossoms, spotted in between the evergreens and dormant deciduous trees."  Each day there was a lesson on the principles of wiring, potting and grafting.  Afternoons they visited the trees in the other bonsai nurseries there.
       After another week of seeing collections in Tokyo and touring the countryside, the group spent a week south of Tokyo, including visits to Takamatsu's Kinashi Bonsai Village (where the trees are mass-produced for marketing in the capital) and Nagoya (where the enthusiasts saw a kiln firing the hand-made containers shaped in hand-pressed molds). 
       On June 15 in Cleveland, Ohio, the American Bonsai Society (ABS) was founded.  At the closing of its rolls a year later, there were ninety-nine individuals and fifteen groups as the charter members.  Kyuzo Murata was the only non-American member at the time.  Most of those who had earlier travelled to Japan were among the charter members.  Jerry Stowell was elected as the first ABS president.
       The September issue of The Reader's Digest included an article on Kyuzo Murata, "The Lilliputian World of the Bonsai" by Noel F. Busch (with four color photos).

       The following March, with most of his flowering trees in full but late bloom, Kyuzo Murata hosted for the first time an American Bonsai Society group to visit and study at Omiya.  In attendance at Kyuka-en for the members of the New York area were Murata's colleague, Masakuni Kawasumi, and two of the former's best students, Masao Komatsu and Yasuji Matsuda.  The cover b&w photograph of the Spring issue (Vol. 2, No. 1) of ABS' Bonsai Journal was of a 400-year old, 40-year-in-training Sargent juniper (Juniperus chinensis var. Sargentii) from Murata's nursery.  The container was a gray, unglazed antique Chinese pot. 7

       February and March of 1969 saw the second ABS tour of Japan, led by Lynn Alstadt and Jerry Stowell.  After touring Takamatsu, Kyoto, and Nagoya, a five-day stay with Kyuzo Murata was further highlighted by visits to the nine other prominent bonsai nurseries in Omiya and the opportunity to see the prestigious annual Kokufu Bonsai Exhibition in Tokyo. 8
       And a November issue of the New Yorker magazine mentioned the arrival of the celebrated three foot tall tree "Fudo" to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  The page and a half long article was appropriately titled "Old Juniper."
       Considered to be between 600 and 1,000 years old, the tree was reportedly found in 1910 by the famous bonsai tree hunter Tahei Suzuki and was first wired by Kinsaku Saida, said to be the greatest wiring master of all time.  Making its first public appearance in 1929, the bonsai received the first prize -- and promptly vanished.  Its owner at the time was a Japanese oil magnate who was afraid that exhibitions would spoil the tree.  A special place deep inside his mansion was built for the "Phantom Shimpaku" (as it would be called by people who saw the tree during its only exhibition).  In 1946, having survived the war, the tree was purchased by Yoshimatsu Hattori and received the name of "Fudo."  The name comes from the "God of Fire Fudo," an imaginary guardian of the Buddha against all evils, standing amid burning flame without moving.  "Fudo's" appearance suggested swirling flames.
       Yoshimatsu Hatori died in 1960, and his entire bonsai collection was put up for sale, except "Fudo" which was taken by his son Osamu.  Although Osamu was not keen about bonsai, it took Kyuzo Murata several years to persuade him to sell that particular tree.  It was finally in the summer of 1969 that "Fudo" came to Murata at Kyuka-en, by which time not many people had actually seen the tree except in a photograph.
       Per Dr. George S. Avery, director of the BBG who was instrumental in introducing tens of thousands of Americans to bonsai and in developing the Garden's outstanding collection:
       "[This tree] was first seen by Botanic Garden representatives in November 1969 when a tour group of garden members visited the Murata Nursery, while in Japan.  After admiring many of the trees available for purchase, two members of our group kept wandering back to look at a gnarled and twisted "old timer," a shimpaku (Sargent juniper).  To see it was to read at a glance its autobiography -- lonely centuries of a frugal existence in an out-of-the-way mountainous region somewhere in Japan, buffeted by continuous winds and winter storms, but always with the strength to survive.   The tour member whose gift made possible its ultimate purchase prefers to remain anonymous, but as a Botanic Garden trustee she has long-admired and appreciated fine bonsai.
      "A few days after the visit [it was decided that the tree] ought to be [sic!] in the Botanic Garden's bonsai collection...and, through a Japanese friend, we telephoned Mr. Murata the next morning, reporting probable interest in acquiring his tree for the Botanic Garden.  He was noncommittal but said he would mail a photograph of the tree, to reach us after our return to the United States.
      "In December, the photograph arrived.  A letter was promptly dispatched from the Botanic Garden to Mr. Murata, accompanied by a purchase order for the tree.  No acknowledgement was received so in the ensuing weeks other letters were written [in English and Japanese].  It seemed that we had failed (or were failing) to convince Mr. Murata that the tree should come to make its life in America...
      "In early July, 1970, a beautiful letter arrived from Mr. Murata.  [It expressed his sincere apology for not responding earlier.  He had had to travel to Osaka several times to set up the Bonsai Show exhibit at EXPO '70.] 
       [When people found out that Murata was contemplating sending the shimpaku to America, they tried to persuade him to keep the tree, but at long last he decided not to.  As he wrote in his letter to the BBG,]
       "'Personally, I do wish to keep this fine tree in my private collection as long as I live; but since I am in the trade, I am willing to sell it only if some vital qualifications are met.  Recently, air pollution in Japan is becoming unbearable for both human beings and especially for trees in the garden.  The pollution is caused mostly by motor cars.  I am not against progress, but trees do not understand it.  They just have to suffer and sometime die quietly.  I have been told that Brooklyn Botanic Garden is large enough that it cannot possibly have a pollution problem within its premises.  There is no place in America like the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where all necessary facilities are available for proper care.  Above all, it is highly important that American people, most of whom are still relatively strange to our fine art of bonsai, will have a chance to appreciate the tree.
       "'These were a few of my many reasons, and at the end everyone [to whom I explained my reasons here] understood.  I have said to my friends that I would not sell it even for a million dollars, if the Brooklyn Botanic Garden were a commercial nursery; but I know BBG staff would love and care for my tree, not just professionally, but wholeheartedly.  Anyway, it is all right now, and I feel as if I am giving my own daughter to an American to be married.'" 
    FUDO

       "Fudo" arrived in New York via Pan American Airways and was officially met at Kennedy International Airport by Robert S. Tomson, Assistant Director of the BBG, together with representatives of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  The prescribed fumigation treatment was carried out.  "Fudo" was put on display at the BBG in a screened quarantine cage -- where she remained until release by the Plant Quarantine Division of the Department of Agriculture.  This hardly seemed a fitting wedding reception for so distinguished a bride; yet it complied with plant importation law and was a justifiable precaution against the introduction of plant pests which, though perhaps no problem in their original homeland, might be difficult or impossible to control if they were to escape in a new environment. 9

       In October 1971, the fine shimpaku "Fudo" was declared dead.  Her body is still preserved at the BBG where it remains inspirational.  Probably the oldest living plant of any kind ever shipped to the U.S., it was said to be about eight hundred and fifty years of age when it died after a year here.  A photograph taken in 1970 in Japan "shows the lower branch, where all the trouble apparently began, not showing any visible change, but the foliage on that branch was thinner than the rest of the foliage."
       "She departed this world leaving many pleasant memories and the love of many people.  I consider that 'Fudo' is still a valuable asset to us all." 10

       The September 1971 issue of Shizen To Bonsai (Nature and Bonsai) magazine contained an article by Murata regarding the early days of ezo spruce bonsai.  (The article would be translated into English, edited and reprinted nineteen years later in International Bonsai magazine.) 11

       In November, 1971 a Workshop and Study Tour of Japan took place, endorsed by the ABS.  Lynn Perry Alstadt, Constance Derderian, George Hull, and Jerry Stowell led the tour which featured a four day seminar at Kyuzo Murata's Omiya garden.

       One year later, Luther and Dorothy Young led a trip with classes to Japan and Hong Kong.  Visits were paid to Kyuzo Murata, Toshio Kawamoto, Wu Yee-sun, and other hosts and locales. 12

       In May of 1975, Kyuzo Murata (left) flew to the U.S. to inspect the rare and valuable bonsai at the U.S. National Arboretum that had been given by Japan to commemorate the Bicentennial.  He returned in July with Masakuni Kawasumi (right, above, born in 1923 and successor to his father's now international distribution business) and four others from Omiya. 
       Murata visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where a gathering of 300 people heard his talk on the art of bonsai.  Quoting from The New York Times, July 9, 1975: "Bonsai is the art of pruning and wiring branches and cutting roots which eventually result in controlling growth so that trees are trained to live in pots,' said Mr. Murata.  Because Mr. Murata, a Zen Buddhist, believes that trees have feelings, he said it hurts them to be cut.  'But it has to be cut,' he continued, 'The tree must understand that I do it out of love -- it's like spanking my own children [sic].'"
       Murata and Kawasumi were the guest artists at both the BCI convention in Miami Beach, FL ("New Bonsai Horizons," running from July 2 through 6 and attended by 319 people) and the ABS convention in Kansas City, MO (held July 10 through 12).  Murata's closing remarks to ABS following a wide-ranging overview of "my favorite and the only subject I have known all my life" were: "Again, I wish to emphasize that bonsai is not a mere sketch of nature but a reflection of the heart of the creator.  Please create your own Americanized bonsai and fill the world with this peaceful art. Sayonara, I shall see you in Tokyo." 13
       The visit was also a promotional tour for Kawasumi's new book, Bonsai with American Trees (Tokyo: Kodansha International, Ltd.).  Murata had penned the Introduction to this work.  (In 1971 Japan Publications, Inc. had come out with Kawasumi's Introductory Bonsai and the Care and Use of Bonsai Tools.  That volume was supervised by Murata.)

       The biggest problem for sending bonsai abroad anywhere is the soil:  every country prohibits soil of another country from being brought in due to microbial and larger pests.  In the case of ordinary trees, the soil attached to the plant is completely removed and is subjected to strict examination.  This would not do for fifty-three bonsai which were part of Japan's Bicentennial gift to the U.S. --  perhaps the lesson with "Fudo" was still fresh on everyone's mind.  As an exceptional case, the U.S.D.A. decided that the bonsai together with pots would, instead, be carried to the National Nursery and subjected to quarantine and cultivation with help from Japan for one year.  At the end of the period, quarantine would be finished.  The Nippon Bonsai Association representatives were very pleased with these arrangements, saying that America not only recognized bonsai as Japan's traditional art, but also fully understood the trees themselves.  The fact that all the gifted trees survived with this nonstandard treatment could be considered a nod to "Fudo."

       Kyuzo Murata contributed the Foreword to Jerald P. Stowell's 1978 book, The Beginner's Guide to American Bonsai (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd.).

       The following year, an Ezo spruce (Picea glehni) trained by Murata from collected material and in the sinuous style won an award at the Japan Bonsai Creator's Exhibition. 14

       In 1984, Kyuzo Murata's book Bonsai no shiki was released.

       Four years later, the Japanese Ministry of Education awarded Kyuzo Murata the prestigious Order of the Rising Sun in recognition of his contribution to Japanese culture and society.  He was the first bonsai gardener to receive this honor. 15

       An English translation and adaptation of Murata's last book was published by Kodansha as Four Seasons of Bonsai in 1991.
       And on that September 6, at the age of 89, the grand master Kyuzo Murata passed on from this life.  At the time, his private collection of some one thousand trees on an acre and-a-half Omiya plot called Kyuka-en, Garden of the Nine Mists, was considered by many to be the finest collection of bonsai in the world.  He was Highest Counselor to the Japan Union of Bonsai Growers and also Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Kokufu Bonsai Association, which holds the most prestigious and invitation-only bonsai exhibition annually. 16

        "...I could not help but compare the bonsai of his early and later years to the sculptures of Michelangelo in his early and later years.  The early works are superb, controlled, and perfected; the work done near life's end, Murata's flowering material and Michelangelo's uncompleted studies, in stone, of slaves in chains are less detailed.  They are vital, impressionistic studies of great power with an appearance of freshness and spontaneity that belies the control we know guided the mature hands of these masters.
        "Bonsai like all great art grows and changes and is influenced by its successful practitioners.  Does Mr. Murata's [Four Seasons of Bonsai] herald a change for bonsai to fresher more spontaneous expression?" 17 

       A posthumous work, Bonsai, Nature in Miniature, was published by Shufunotomo Ltd. in the year 2000.  The co-author is listed as Isamu Murata, sensei's son who was born in 1936 and began studying bonsai himself in 1959.  After Kyuzo's death, Isamu took over the running of Kyoka-en. 18

NOTES


1     Murata, Kyuzo Bonsai: Miniature Potted Trees (Tokyo: Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., 1964), pg. 115; Busch, Noel F., "The Lilliputian World of the Bonsai", The Reader's Digest, September 1967, pg. 184.

2    Murata, Kyuzo  "The Early Days of Ezo Spruce Bonsai," International Bonsai, International Bonsai Arboretum, 1990/No. 2,  pp. 14-17, pg. 15 with b&w photo of the group planting; Tayson, Dr. Juyne, "Bonsai Personality -- Kyuzo Murata" , International Bonsai Digest Bicentennial Edition (Los Angeles: International Bonsai Digest, 1976), pg. 94; Nozaki, Shinobu  Dwarf Trees (Bonsai) (Tokyo: Sanseido Company, Ltd., 1940), pg. 34; Masakuni's Bonsai Tools and User's Manual (1979, seventh edition 1989), inside front cover and pg. 5.  How did Murata come to care for the Imperial trees -- was it, perhaps, by way of introduction from Kato-san?  Per a review by Cheryl Owens of the book The Imperial Bonsai of Japan in the Fall 1977 issue of the Bonsai Journal, American Bonsai Society, pg. 66, in 1926 there were more than 5,000 bonsai in the possession of the Imperial Palace, compared with about 600 in 1976.

3    Busch's article, pp. 184-185, which on the former page states "That bonsai growing survived Japan's dark days during World War II must be credited almost entirely to Murata."; Tayson's article, pg. 13, which states that "only Murata San was allowed to continue as a bonsai entrepreneur, because he was the official entrusted to care for the Imperial Bonsai Collection."; Nippon Bonsai Association's Classic Bonsai of Japan (Tokyo: Kodansha International; 1989), pg. 154; Fukumoto, David W. "Saburo Kato: The Gentle Spirit of International Bonsai and Peace," Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 22, No. 4, Winter 1988, pg. 6 states that the Katos at their Omiya nursery were criticized for taking care of bonsai during the war.

4   Busch's article, pp. 185-186.  Where and when was Mercier's article[s] published?  Our researches have not yet tracked it down.

5   Murata, Four Seasons, dustjacket notes; "Yuji Yoshimura: A Memorial Tribute To A Bonsai Master & Pioneer" by William N. Valavanis, International Bonsai, IBA, 1998/No. 1, pg. 31; Murata, Bonsai, pg. 115; Scholtz, Elizabeth  "Japanese Beginnings at Brooklyn Botanic Garden," Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring 1979, pp. 5-7. "In consultation with George S. Avery." 

6   Perry, Lynn   Bonsai, front biographical information; Bonsai Journal, ABS, Spring 1987, pg. 7; "History of Bonsai East" by Dorothy S. Young, International Bonsai Digest presents Bonsai Gems (Los Angeles: International Bonsai Digest, 1974), pp. 92; Per "The Catalyst" by Dorothy S. Young (Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 8, No. 2, Summer 1974, pg. 40), Perry was introduced by Kaname Kato to Kyuzo Murata.  Kaname Kato, "a quiet Japanese gentleman, a scholar, and horticulturist," was also the one who introduced Dr. John L. Creech to bonsai  in 1955 during one of the latter's plant exploration travels to Asia.  Creech, later as Director of the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., subsequently worked to establish the National Bonsai Collection there, with Kato-san serving as an intermediary between Dr. Creech and the Japan Bonsai Society.  Per personal e-mail correspondance between Dr. Creech and RJB on Nov. 26, 1999, Kaname Kato is not related toTomikichi (and Saburo, Hideo, et al) Kato. 

7   Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1967, pp. 3-5 and Summer 1987, pg. 6; Stowell, Jerald  "People, Place, Plants, Revisted," Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 23, No. 3, Fall 1989, pg. 10. 

8   Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 2, No. 2, pg. 19.

9   Avery, George S. "'Fudo' Comes to America," Bonsai Journal, ABS, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1971, pp. 3-5. The cover is a b&w photo of the tree.  The photo by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, reproduced here, is from pg. 3

10   shows the lower foliage quote per Tayson's article, pg. 13; She departed quote per Kyuzo Murata in Bonsai Journal, ABS, Summer 1987, pg. 7.

11   Murata, "The Early Days" article, introduction, which also states Murata authored several Japanese texts and was "the advisor to several organizations and the Imperial Bonsai Collection."  The latter seems to imply that he no longer was directly caring for those marvelous trees -- who was and what sort of apprenticeship program and/or "résumé" was required for that position?

12   Itinerary Brochure for this trip.  In the spring of 1970, the first Japanese edition of the Japan Bonsai Society's Nippon Bonsai Taikan (Grand View of Japanese Bonsai and Nature in Four Seasons) was published.  The ninety page English book, translated by Yuji Yoshimura and Samuel H. Beach and published in August 1972, included a small b&w photo of each original color one in the 352 page Japanese edition, along with a rendering of most of the text.  On page 324 of the Japanese (pg. 81 of the English) can be found a picture of Kyuka-en.  The conical thatched roof of the workshop behind the many orderly rows of bonsai catches one's eye.  The edge of the roof is visible in the upper right corner of the first picture in Busch's article.  A color photo of Kyuka-En with the modest caption "A view of a typical Japanese bonsai nursery" can be found on pp. 14-15 of Kawasumi's Bonsai with American Trees. 

13   Stowell, Guide, pg. 83, and Murata's Foreword to on pg. 7; NY Times quote per "Kyuzo Murata in U.S.," Bonsai Journal, Vol. 9, No. 3, Fall 1975, pg. 64; Murata's address to ABS was reprinted as "Spirit of Bonsai," Bonsai Journal, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer 1987, pp. 6-7; Bonsai, BCI, October 1975, pp. 256-257.  Color photo from inside back cover of dust jacket of Kawasumi's Bonsai with American Trees.

14   Murata, "The Early Days" article, pg. 17 with b&w photo.

15   Murata, Four Seasons in Bonsai (Tokyo: Kodansha International Ltd.), dustjacket notes.

16   Bonsai Journal, ABS, Spring 1992, pg. 28.

17   "The Trees - Kate Bowditch" in "Books" by Max Braverman and Kate Bowditch, Bonsai Journal, ABS, Spring 1992, pg. 28.  A review of Four Seasons in Bonsai, which also includes "The Pots - Max Braverman.".

18   Murata, Bonsai, Nature in Miniature, dustjacket notes, which give the date of death as 1993.  No other reference to the son has yet been discovered.  It is not currently known by RJB as to how Kyuzo Murata was related -- if at all -- to the prolific bonsai authors and editors Keiji and Kenji Murata.
 
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