Saikei ( ?? ) is literally translated as "planting landscape". Saikei is a descendant of the Japanese art of bonsai, bonseki, and bonkei, and is associated less directly with similar miniature landscape art such as the Chinese Saikei is typical on a large ceramic tray with low sides. In trays, rocks and soils are set to show the landscape, often mimicking certain types of real landscapes such as beaches or mountain trails. Small living trees are planted on the ground and can be set to emphasize perspective, for example, with smaller trees to the back of the screen. The trees themselves are similar to, but less complicated than, bonsai trees. They are selected and cultivated to look like adult trees that match the simulated landscape they plant. Non-tree plant specimens can also grow in saikei, such as ground cover or other small plants that help generate the landscape. Saikei differs from the associated Japanese art form in several major ways. According to Lew Buller, Toshio Kawamoto (founder of the saikei form) "insists that his landscape is not a bonsai", cites saikei rules such as the use of compulsory stones, and the placement of trees and roots over the edge of the tray. Bonsai uses stones as a base for trees or trees with roots-top-stone style (Sekijoju) and grow-in-a-rock style (Ishizuke), but do not form landscapes of rock and soil mixtures. The shape of the soil is very important in saikei, where it is reduced or nothing is important in bonsai. In general, saikei concentrates on the awakening of natural living landscapes, not on the individual tree characters as emphasized on bonsai. Bonseki and bonkei art also depict miniature landscapes in trays, but do not include live trees or other flora. In bonseki, a simple landscape is depicted on a flat tray using sand and rock. In bonkei, rocks and carved materials (eg, cement) are formed into hills and mountains that rise from soil materials such as sand and gravel. Miniature figures of people, animals, buildings, and other outer elements can be placed on the bonkei but not in place on the saikei. The presence of living material means saikei challenging to preserve and display relative to bonkei. Video Saikei
History
The saikei school was founded in Japan by Toshio Kawamoto after World War II. Kawamoto was born in 1917, the eldest of the bonsai master Tokichi Kawamoto, and trained in the art of bonsai. In 1960, after the death of his father, he managed the Meiju-En family bonsai garden. He actively promoted the practice of saikei after this time, published two seminal books on saikei ( Bonsai-Saikei and Saikei: Living Landscapes in Miniature ) and participated in the creation of Nippon Bonsai-Saikei Institute and the Nippon Saikei Association.
As Kawamoto begins to develop the rules and forms of saikei, the practice of bonsai is at a critical low point in Japan. The cultivation of labor-intensive bonsai is almost impossible under wartime conditions. Many bonsai, which are being developed or completed, have died in the nation's major collections, as well as in individual parks across the country. The postwar economic conditions make the purchase and planting of real bonsai almost impossible for the average Japanese household.
Kawamoto creates a simple form of tree view that provides the aesthetic and contemplative qualities of bonsai, while also supporting the cultivation of crop stocks that can eventually be used as bonsai materials. He based this art form primarily on the principles of group planting of bonsai and featuring stones of bonkei and bonseki. The initial goal is to age and thicken the young breeding stems. Saikei is a way for cheap crops and stones to be put together in a fun setting, easily accessible by the average person. As an aged saikei specimen, it will produce a prospective bonsai tree, which can be moved from saikei to bonsai.
As a relatively young art form, Japanese saikei does not have a deep tradition. But it is linked to a limited number of popular landscapes popular in Asia, including Japanese bonkei , Chinese art
jingle , and Vietnamese art hÃÆ'òn non b? . The term penjing applies both to individual trees growing in containers, similar to bonsai, as well as to detailed miniature landscapes that include trees, other plants, stones, earth, water, and miniature statues of people, animals and other items. Similarly, hÃÆ'òn non b? emphasizes the creation of stylish island-style miniatures projecting from bodies of water and carrying the burden of trees and other plants.
In postwar Japan, saikei is seen as an environmentally and economically responsible way of spreading trees for use on bonsai. Even an economically limited individual or family can enjoy the many contemplative and aesthetic benefits of bonsai, without incurring the efforts and costs associated with an adult bonsai specimen. The same benefits are gained for today's saikei.
Maps Saikei
Practice
Saikei is designed to be an easier practice to participate than bonsai. The saikei container provides a free quantity of soil, eases the careful burden of the watering and the root pruning that marks the planting of the bonsai. Saikei planting is fast to assemble, with participants first able to create effective results within hours. The trees can be very young and therefore cheap, and no other material except the tray itself is expensive. The trees themselves do not require a great deal of formation or other manipulation, compared with complex and time-consuming development practices. As a result, saikei is suitable for beginners and for those who want to spend a little for the hobby of planting a dwarf tree.
A saikei screen does contain many live plants, and requires growth conditions that allow them to flourish. Saikei will be designed to use plants that all have the same cultivation needs, especially soil types and watering. The general climate requirements of the plant will also be the same: it is difficult to cultivate plants from different hardiness zones in one saikei look. Saikei that contains plants that require outdoor conditions will grow and be displayed outside the door, perhaps with special protection in winter.
Due to a certain saikei age, some of the trees may grow out of proportion to other sections of the screen. This change is expected and in fact is one of the goals of saikei. The owner has two options, to reduce the size of the big tree, or to remove it from saikei and grow it separately. Reducing their size involves techniques related to bonsai such as pruning. Eliminating trees that are too big from saikei will naturally plant them individually and cultivate them as bonsai. After the removal of these trees, saikei can be added with new trees, restyled to fit the remaining trees, or dismantled and redesigned for new plans. In all cases, the trees are preserved and continue to be cultivated under the principle of saikei developing new potential bonsai.
Aesthetics
Design
The art of saikei overlaps the bonsai to some extent, such as bonsai including the traditions of planting several trees. Saikei has a stronger emphasis on the shape and structure of the landscape than the bonsai, and has far greater freedom in the layout and materials of that landscape. Trees can appear singly or in groups in the appropriate places in the landscape, even on the sides and tops of rocks representing mountains or hills. There is no rule to condense the trees together in adjacent units in saikei. The multi-tree style of Bonsai, on the other hand, has a very simple landscape, usually a plain plain or a little dome of earth beneath the trees. Bonsai planting is commonly developed to display an integrated silhouette involving all trees, where they produce one mass leaf behind and to the left and right of the stem. In bonsai, trees really dominate group planting, while in saikei, the tree only decorates the saikei landscape.
Saikei must contain rocks, which can play the role of mountains, cliffs, rocks, streams, shorelines, or other landscape aspects. They are the skeleton of the landscape, and they are striking. In planting bonsai groups, stones are sparse and if present are not conspicuous and conquered into the trees.
Saikei does not focus on the detailed form of each tree, which is the main goal for bonsai. The trees in saikei are not expected to be the common, thick-trunk specimens that are common in bonsai. In order for large-scale trees even with large saikei screens, they should not be more than four to six inches long. Smaller saikei screens may require smaller trees. As a result, the saikei trees are often immature and thinly trunked, with small root structures and simple branching. In addition, the use of small trees means that smaller preferred species are preferred. Examples of varieties include small juniper, Hinoki cypress, azalea, and Chinese elm. The aesthetic impact of the saikei look does not originate from the striking individual tree specimens, but from the general design of the builder's span, the cumulative visual impact of some or many live trees, rocks and landscapes, and various other plant shapes are placed. on the screen.
Saikei allows several species of trees to be placed in a single landscape, and allows other plant shapes such as flowers and grasses, while some planting in bonsai is usually a single tree species with only moss allowed as additional vegetation. Because of this flexibility in plant material, saikei can be designed to show the progress of the season in much greater variations and details than the planting of mono-culture bonsai. Aesthetically pleasing reference to the season is an important tradition in Japanese gardens, and the saikei look can be more garden-like than bonsai look. Fallen and flowering trees, which change throughout the growing season, can be mixed with conifers that will remain green throughout the winter. Spring leaves and flowers, summer fruits, fall colors and autumn leaves, and the contrast of deciduous trees branched off with snow-covered evergreens can represent the annual cycle of whole gardens in the tea table space.
Saikei works with palettes consisting only of plants, rocks, soil, and sometimes water. Bonkei, penjing, and hÃÆ'òn non b? allows the inclusion of miniatures at the scene. This miniature can include wooden structures such as huts, bridges, or boats. The human and animal ceramic sculptures are also common, and all miniatures contribute to the sense of scale in individual containers. The Saikei landscape is simpler and more abstract, emphasizing the natural shapes and materials of the landscape and leaving viewers to engage their imaginations. In this case, saikei is similar to bonsai, which also avoids decorations other than moss and stone in containers.
Impact of aesthetics
Saikei's displays can range in lengthwise from the classic bonsai savings to the wealth of Japanese gardens in miniature. At this point in the development of the art form, there is no limit on the number of crop varieties in view or landscape complexity. The saikei designer can suggest a wabi or sabi with simple planting between old and rotting rocks, or raise all the mountain forests with some peaks, trees, seasonal flowers and grass, and moss. Some saikei even reach out to two or more containers, which when placed near each other creates vast and complex images.
The writer on saikei, especially the founders of Toshio Kawamoto and Herb Gustafson, who studied at the Saikei Bonsai Kawamoto Institute, emphasized that the design and implementation of saikei should depict a realistic landscape. Simplicity and simplicity are not important principles in saikei that they are in bonsai. Saikei developed in the style of Kawamoto will be complicated in topography, rich in vegetation, and greatly evoke a realistic location in nature. The tree will have a natural shape, without a cough. Trees and ground cover will have a relative size that is almost a landscape model, free of excessive proportions. Plants will be selected to match the simulated location, so that single planting will contain only species that may be found together. If bonsai implies the aesthetic principle of an abstract and violent Japanese Zen garden, saikei resembles a traditional Japanese tsukiyama garden like Suizen-ji J? Ju-en, which is modeled after the famous real scene.
With a brief tradition and simpler aesthetic rules of bonsai, saikei is more accessible to amateurs. According to Kawamoto, "[s] aikei has no limits, it avoids the rigid formality often seen in bonsai, lends itself more to experimentation and freedom in composition." Simple aesthetics mean that saikei's appearance is more easily made and appreciated than one of its parent forms. Audience fun comes from designer ingenuity in creating natural miniatures, natural aesthetic responses that do not require schooling and can be enjoyed by almost all observers.
See also
- Bonsai
- Bonsai cultivation and care
- Bonseki
- Bonkei
- Penjing
- Rhymeprose in Landscape Garden Miniature
References
External links
- The Saikei International Association
Source of the article : Wikipedia