Kunio Kobayashi
Japanese bonsai artist
Kunio Kobayashi (Japanese: 小林國雄; [kobajaɕi̥ kɯɲio]; born 1948) is a Japanese bonsai artist, and the owner of the Shunkaen Bonsai Museum in Tokyo.
Life
Kobayashi was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. His family was involved in floriculture, and he grew up working in a nursery. In 1976, at age 28, he saw a Japanese white pine bonsai in an exhibition and was inspired to study the art form. Now, over 200 apprentices and international students study under Kobayashi. He has also given lectures on bonsai in nearly twenty countries.
Shunkaen Bonsai Museum
In 2002, Kobayashi opened the Shunkaen Bonsai Museum (Japanese: 春花園 BONSAI 美術館) in the Edogawa ward of Tokyo. The garden houses over 1,000 trees and attracts abouts 10,000 foreign visitors each year. One of the garden's most famous trees is estimated to be 1,000 years old. This tree, which Kobayashi acquired in an auction, is considered by many to be the finest in his collection.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kunio Kobayashi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.