Lately, here in Tokyo, I keep coming across bonsai in the places where the old and the cutting-edge meet — Omotesando, Ginza. The craft is shifting: from a world where an artist earns their name in historic exhibitions, toward a life lived on social media, and now toward a movement to carry bonsai out into the city as a showcase. The person actually making this real is Azukari's first partner artist, Kazuki Saeki.
At Azukari, partner artists raise your tree on your behalf. So what matters most is how those artists are active out in the world. Saeki broadcasts to audiences in Japan and abroad, carries bonsai into the city, and is expanding into exhibitions, sales, and live performance — an artist who combines a global voice, a contemporary sensibility, and a vision for bringing bonsai into everyday spaces.
Who is Kazuki Saeki
A Tokyo-based bonsai artist, certified by the Japan Horticultural Society, with around seven years in the craft. What drew him in was the sight of bleached deadwood — jin and shari — living alongside green foliage in a single tree: life and death inhabiting the same plant. He shares his daily practice online, reaching people with no prior connection to bonsai, with fans at home and abroad. His work spans experiences, sales, restyling, and bonsai showcases in hotels and shops.
In the field #1 — A bonsai showcase in the city
This vision has taken form as a showcase. At LAMBERT (@lambert.tokyo), a reservation-only Japanese-garden tea-room café in Tokyo, Saeki stages his work as a bonsai artist. Bonsai has stepped out of the special exhibition and into an everyday space where people gather: his "bonsai into the city" approach, in action.
And the tree on display can actually be acquired — it is MKT-004, a Shimpaku juniper of about 50 years (semi-cascade) in Azukari's collection.
Saeki's showcase isn't limited to LAMBERT. He has also partnered with a forest resort in Hakone, Hakone Retreat fore & villa 1/f (@hakone.retreat), carrying bonsai into the spaces where people stay. Saeki leads the bonsai work, the display, and the spatial design, and from June 1 a bonsai-included stay plan — likely the first of its kind in Japan — has begun.
"Giving form to the memory of a stay."
Not simply viewing a bonsai, but spending time alongside a single tree — facing nature within the quiet. The aim is an experience whose memory keeps living, softly, in everyday life after you return home.
In the field #2 — Four trees to meet on the Japan trip
This MKT-004 (Shimpaku, ~50 years) is one of the four trees you can meet on the Alts autumn Japan trip. There, you can watch Saeki style a tree on the spot in a live performance, and view all four featured trees up close. The tree you saw in the city showcase, met again on the trip, and made your own — that single thread is the experience.
The four featured trees:
- Japanese Black Pine, 45y — cascade
- Shimpaku Juniper, 40y — semi-cascade
- Shimpaku Juniper, 30y — informal upright
- Shimpaku Juniper, 50y — semi-cascade ← on display at LAMBERT, MKT-004
A short story
Beneath his activity lies an encounter: a grower over ninety who works only in neagari (exposed-root) white pine, having started after sixty-five — yet every tree he had raised over decades was powerful and beautiful. Across a sixty-year age gap, they connected through bonsai. It's never too early or too late to start. Bonsai connects people. His outreach and his work in the city are extensions of that same belief.
Every Azukari tree is raised by artists active at the front lines of the craft. The tree you met in a city showcase, by Kazuki Saeki, can be yours.