A Historical Study on the Names of Chinese Penjing and Japanese Bonsai.

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  • 中国盆景と日本盆栽の呼称の歴史的研究
  • チュウゴク ボンケイ ト ニホン ボンサイ ノ コショウ ノ レキシテキ ケン

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In medieval Japan (from the Kamakura to the Momoyama period), names given to bonsai in sources written in Chinese include, for example, (1) the name of the plant, prefixed by the character bon-tray, i.e. miniature-for example, bonbai (ume, Japanese damson, ) and bonsho (matsu, pinetree, );(2) bonsan (miniature landscape, ); and (3) shobuseki (a Japanese sweet flag clinging to a rock, ), all of which derive from names used in Song-period Chinese sourses. The familiar term bonsai was used in the middle ages in the broad sense of “potted plants”. From the middle of the Edo period, it was used in the broad and narrow sense of a “scene or representation of something other than the plant in itself”. However, from some time around 1890, it became established to be used in the narrow sense among connoisseurs of dealers and hobbyists in bonsai. This was a result of the Chinese-inspired fashion for the ritual drinking of tea (not the powdered tea of the ceremony but ordinary sencha) that developed at the end of the Edo period and the beginning of the Meiji period. The terminology of the sencha ritual uses Chinese. In their capacity as accessories of this ceremony, miniature trees were referred to, in the same way as ordinary potted plants, as bonsai, and this, around 1890, came into regular use among connoisseurs of dealers and hobbyists in bonsai. It was only in the 1960-70s that Japanese dictionaries in Japan began to omit the broad sense of “potted plant” from their definition of the word bonsai and to include the narrow definition only.

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