Bonsai and Penjing. Ann McClellan
rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_dcd982e7-7b00-56cc-ae8a-403bcdfea97c.jpg" alt=""/>
Saburo Kato (far left) joined Prime Minister Obuchi and Mrs. Obuchi and President and Mrs. Clinton in admiring the Ezo Spruce at the White House in 1999.
Bonsai were also on view at the White House when Prime Minister Keizō Obuchi visited President William Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1998. Saburo Kato, Chairman of the Nippon Bonsai Association and a key figure in the donation of the Bicentennial Gift from Japan, was present, accompanying the prime minister, his bonsai student. Obuchi’s gift to Clinton in 1998 of an Ezo Spruce collected by Kato in the 1930s and a tiger-stripe stone given by former Prime Minister Hiroshi Mitsuzuka were displayed when Clinton visited Japan. The stone, honoring 1998 as a Year of the Tiger in Asian calendars, is from the Setagawa River area in the Shiga and Kyoto prefectures.
Bonsai from the museum again graced the White House when President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush hosted a dinner honoring Japan’s Prime Minister Junichirō Koizumi in 2006. A Eurya (Eurya emarginata), in training since 1970, served as a focal point in the Blue Room, while an Ezo Spruce (Picea glehnii) and a Japanese White Pine (Pinus parviflora) were placed elsewhere.
Other nations also use bonsai as the highest level of diplomatic gifts. His Majesty King Hassan II of Morocco gave President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan two Japanese bonsai from his personal collection in 1983. The king’s Japanese White Pine (Pinus parviflora) survives to this day and has been in training since 1832.
The United States also uses trees as national gifts. In April 2012, 3,000 dogwoods were given to Japan in honor of the centennial of the gift of flowering cherry trees from Tokyo to Washington, D.C. The gift was announced by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a dinner for Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda held at the National Geographic Society. The dogwoods were selected by plant geneticist Richard Olsen, now Director of the U.S. National Arboretum, who took into consideration the soil conditions, temperature ranges and insect pests for the trees to survive in Japan. One thousand dogwood trees were planted in Tokyo and another thousand in the Tohoku region that had been ravaged by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011. The remaining thousand were planted at schools and other organizations throughout Japan. The State Department specifically requested that Saburo Kato’s Ezo Spruce be exhibited at the dinner, a beautiful reminder of the power of trees and other living art forms to be symbols of peace and international friendship.
President Clinton and Prime Minister Obuchi flank Saburo Kato in the Blue Room, admiring a California Juniper (Juniperus californica), in training since 1967, and one of the first bonsai to enter the museum’s North American collection.
An Ezo Spruce (Picea glehnii), in training since 1925, was carried on a traditional four-handled tray for its return from the White House to the museum.
Eurya (Eurya emarginata), an evergreen shrub native to the seacoasts of China, Japan and Korea, made Prime Minister Koizumi feel welcome in the White House Blue Room.
SPOTLIGHT ON Saburo Kato
Saburo Kato (1915–2008) was a respected, charismatic and influential bonsai master. The son of a bonsai master, he grew up with bonsai from his earliest years. He experienced the grim days of World War II in Japan when even gray water was rationed and many bonsai were planted in the ground to survive. After the war, there was a resurgence of interest in bonsai, driven in part by American GI’s fascination with the miniature trees.
Kato’s leadership of the Nippon Bonsai Association (NBA) included the facilitation of the Bicentennial Gift of bonsai to the U.S. in 1976. In fact, he was instrumental in convincing NBA members to participate by donating trees and coming to the U.S. to teach Americans how to care for the trees properly. He himself came to work on the bonsai in advance of their display at the Dedication Ceremony and returned to the museum on many occasions over the years to give advice on the care of the collection. The museum, in turn, honored Saburo Kato during his lifetime for his invaluable role in making the Bicentennial Gift from Japan a reality by naming one of its gardens the Kato Family Stroll Garden.
In 1989, Saburo Kato founded and served as the first Chairman of the World Bonsai Friendship Federation (WBFF), an organization whose mission it is to bring peace and goodwill to the world through the art of bonsai. Today, the WBFF honors Kato’s memory by sponsoring World Bonsai Day on the second Saturday of each May, and at the World Bonsai Convention held every four years. Kato believed that the spirit of bonsai, bonsai no kokoro in Japanese, was accessible to people everywhere, that by nurturing bonsai anyone could experience how their love and care creates peace and beauty, a feeling that can be extended to all of nature and the wider world.
The Kato Family Stroll Garden honors the long-term support Saburo Kato and his wife provided to the museum and its collections.
Saburo Kato came to America to prune the bonsai in quarantine, preparing them to be displayed at the Dedication of the Bicentennial Gift on July 9, 1976.
chapter three
Gifts from Japan
An apocryphal story, told in jest, says that when John Creech, the new Director of the U.S. National Arboretum, and Sylvester “Skip” March, the Arboretum’s Chief Horticulturist at the time, left for Tokyo in 1975 to receive Japan’s Bicentennial Gift, they took only two large, empty suitcases to pick up what they expected would be a few tiny trees. Instead, they were thrilled to find 50 trees waiting for them—one for each state in the U.S.—plus six viewing stones, then astonished to learn there would be three more bonsai added to the group. These additions were gifts from the Imperial family—Princess Chichibu, Prince Takamatsu and Emperor Hirohito himself. The trees and the viewing stones packed in their sturdy crates required an entire Pan Am 707 freighter to ship them from Tokyo to California. Two other planes flew them across the continental U.S., arriving in Baltimore, Maryland on March 31, 1975. The trees were unpacked and placed in a special facility for the year-plus quarantine period Creech had negotiated to make their importation possible.
Some bonsai from the Bicentennial Gift soak up the sun they need in the museum’s courtyard on a summer day, with koinobori flags flying, mementos of Children’s Day, and crapemyrtles at their peaks.
Inspired by entrances to Japanese temples and shrines, the Cryptomeria Walk provides a calming transition from the National Arboretum grounds to the museum’s display areas.
The Imperial Pine, a Japanese Red Pine (Pinus densiflora) in training since 1795, took pride of place as a gift from Emperor Hirohito (1901–1989). It was an unprecedented honor for the emperor to include a tree from the Imperial Collection in the gift to the United States. None had ever left Japan before. Fortunately, Creech and his colleagues realized what an exceptional tree they had received, and they made it possible for the tree to leave quarantine and go to the White House for a dinner on October 3, 1975 honoring Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako, hosted by President Gerald and First Lady Betty Ford.
Princess Chichibu (1909–1995), the Emperor’s sister-in-law, wife of the Emperor Taishō’s second son, gave a tree from her personal collection—a Japanese Hemlock (Tsuga diversifolia). The daughter of a Japanese diplomat, Princess Chichibu was born Setsuko Matsudaira in London. Later, her