What Princess Persimmon is
Princess Persimmon is a bonsai that carries small orange-red fruit in autumn. Its botanical name is Diospyros rhombifolia; in Japanese it is called rouyagaki (老爺柿). It is a relative of the persimmon, with leaves shaped like diamonds.
The fruit is only a few centimetres across. On a single tree, each fruit colours at its own pace, so you never tire of looking at it. Small white flowers open in spring, green fruit hangs through summer, and in autumn it turns to orange and red. The leaves colour too, and together they make the whole tree read as autumn itself.
A tree in summer. Green fruit, with wire guiding the branches. From here it turns toward the reds of autumn.
The trees are either male or female, and a female needs pollen from a male to set fruit. From its first flowering, it takes roughly seven to ten years. A persimmon in fruit, in other words, is a tree that has been given that much time. In Japanese bonsai it belongs to the mimono, the fruiting trees grown to be watched for what they bear.
The person who makes the material — Nijuri Yoshio
This persimmon was raised by Nijuri Yoshio (二十里芳男), in Kiryu, Gunma. He is a grower of persimmon bonsai, a maker of raw material. Over thirty to forty years he has produced more than three hundred varieties of persimmon bonsai. He is a pioneer.
Bonsai runs on two hands. The grower who spends years in the field raising a tree's potential, and the artist who later reads that potential and gives it form. One tree passes through both. This is the story of the first hand, the one that is rarely told.
Two persimmons
We brought two Princess Persimmons from Nijuri's field. We see them as a pair, two trees chosen to be considered as one set.
The tree with the mei "Urashima Taro." Photographed with its name tag still on, in Nijuri's field.
One carries a mei, a name: Urashima Taro, after the old Japanese tale of a fisherman handed a box he is told never to open. The other has no name yet. It will be shaped, and one day given a name together with its owner. A mei is not an inventory number; it is a name given to the story a tree has carried. To have no name yet is simply to have a story that has not started.
The two are still just as they came out of the field. From here an artist will change the pot, shape the branches, and carry them toward their autumn fruit. We will keep the record of that journey as it happens.
How Azukari thinks about it
These trees will now be shaped by an artist toward their fruiting form. The tree stays in Japan; the owner can be anywhere in the world. Each year's fruit arrives as a record, and one day you come to meet the tree in person. Because the tree itself does not reach your hands, we place the value on what remains: the record, and the story.
Japanese bonsai has continued for centuries by passing from hand to hand. To join that lineage as a new owner is what custody means at Azukari.
Closing
For one persimmon to fruit in autumn, decades of the grower's time and a season of the artist's work are layered together. You take on that time, and pass it to the next hand. A small, certain step toward keeping a rich culture going.