Professional bonsai and suiseki from Peter Warren. Japanese bonsai educated by well known bonsai master Kunio Kobayashi.

Introduction

This article was originally published on the ABBA website quite a few years ago, right at the start of my time at Shunkaen back in 2003. Some of the views expressed are slightly naïve, but some I still hold today. An interesting look back at the beginning of it all...

Photo: Peter Warren. My name is Peter Warren and I am currently working as an apprentice at Shunkaen on the outskirts of Tokyo. For those that don’t know, Shunkaen is the name of Kunio Kobayashi’s bonsai garden, and he is considered to be one of the top bonsai artists in Japan, and by implication, the world. I have been here full time for going on six months now and I am starting to get to grips with the hard work, long hours, near constant watering and general insanity that is my everyday life. I contacted ABBA to say hello and offer any help I could to the British bonsai world and I was asked to write about me and my experiences...

I’m 24 years old and come from North Yorkshire, but had the misfortune to be born in High Wycombe, where I stayed long enough to start watching the local football team, Wycombe Wanderers, who are tragically doomed to tedious obscurity. I’m a simple bloke really, Beer, Birds, Football and Bonsai. At the moment however, not in that order. I have no previous bonsai experience to speak of, except for seeing them in shops, books and (laughably so in hindsight) Karate Kid III. That said I have always had an interest in all things green, working in a horticultural nursery during University holidays and a bit of gardening on the side. I also enjoy getting very dirty, and hate wearing a suit, so a desk job was never going to be my cup of tea, but why bonsai? The most difficult question to answer and one I couldn’t even begin to try and put into words. But I should try...

I studied Physics with Astrophysics at Leicester University, managing to scrape through by the skin of my teeth, almost entirely through lack of effort on my part, being far too easily distracted by my Playstation, the local and the snooker hall. I chose to study Physics because I wanted to understand how the universe worked on both the infinitely large and minutely small scale, how everything came together and worked together in harmony; and I thought it would be a challenge. It was in fact quite so, but one that I decided not to try that hard at overcoming, mainly because I could only see myself wearing a shirt and tie, sat in front of a computer screen worrying over the debugging process of some pointless program I'd written.

After four years of it, I was ready to cast it all off and follow my heart rather than the over bearing obligation to go to University to get an education because I could. If only my even more over bearing student loans were so easy to be rid of.

Photo: England. Obviously I was too much of a coward to follow my heart all in one step so I became an English Teacher in Japan, thus putting off any bullet biting for another year. No offence to English Teachers intended, but it was a joke. I despised it and all that it entails in Japan. I do know some very nice people, who teach, but they are the exceptions rather than the rule and I shall leave it at that. It wasn’t all bad, I did get to experience the serene insanity of Japan, meet nice people, drink plenty of beer, watch England against Sweden in the World Cup along with any Japanese domestic league game I could get to; and most importantly I was introduced into the Bonsai world...

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