Bonsai styles
Open-knowledge reference entry
Bonsai is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers. Similar practices exist in other cultures, including the Chinese tradition of penjing from which the art originated, and the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese hòn non bộ, but this article describes the Japanese tradition.
The Japanese art of bonsai dates back over a thousand years, and has evolved its own unique aesthetics and terminology. A key design practice in bonsai is a set of commonly understood, named styles that describe canonical tree and setting designs. These well-known styles provide a convenient shorthand means for communicating about existing bonsai and for designing new ones.
Concept of styles
Styles can be grouped based on different criteria, such as the trunk orientation or the number of trunks in the bonsai specimen. Some of the major style groupings include:
Trunk orientation. A frequently used set of styles describe the orientation of the bonsai tree's main trunk. Different terms are used for a tree with its apex directly over the center of the trunk's entry into the soil (these are the upright styles, including chokkan and moyogi), slightly to the side of that center (e.g., sho-shakan), deeply inclined to one side (e.g., chu-shakan and dai-shakan), and inclined below the point at which the trunk of the bonsai enters the soil (the cascade or kengai styles).
Trunk and bark surface.
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