At 08:13 AM 9/15/2003 -0400, Jim Lewis wrote:
There's a rather silly discussion on the gallery about a bonsai
event somewhere that is having a "Yamadori Boxwood" workshop.
Someone mocked that that meant they were all collected
(presumably in the wild) from the mountains.
This seemed to me to be another example of people insisting that
the shades of meaning of a word don't change over time (and
geography).
I've seen more and more often the use of "yamadori" as merely a
"collected" tree, since comparatively few bonsai now are
collected in "mountains." Certainly none of mine are, few (if
any) of Gary Marchall's, etc.
I think I even read somewhere -- and quite recently, too -- that
even the Japanese aren't kowtowing to the _exact_ meaning of
"yamadori" any more and use the term for a collected tree. The
expanded usage makes sense for both here and there (and
particularly for boxwood ;-) which are mostly collected from old
hedges, though I suppose the plant may still exist in the wild
somewhere in Asia. (Heck, they exist in the wild here -- having
escaped from old farmsteads to crop up in the north Florida
woods.)
Thoughts? Purists vs. loose constructionists. Liberals
(thinkers ;-) versus conservatives (if it wasn't done that way
yesterday it ain't right! ;-).
I did something on this for Bonsai Today On Line.
Yama means picked, dori means mountain. Since there are no plants left in
the mountains usage of the word changed to mean collected from the
wild. This is a usage known only in bonsai circles. So anything ever
cultivated even allowed to grow wild is not yamadori by the experts even
today. Yamadori now seems to mean styled by nature.
Any person learning Japanese as a second language or being born here would
not get this meaning. Japanese has many subtle variations known by various
classes of people. I worked at a company where I purchased business cards
in English and Japanese for our 35 year old CEO. The Japanese type setter
chose what he thought the proper title, but is also meant honored
grandfather. After that we had a well bred very proper educated Japanese
woman do all our title translations.
Kitsune Miko
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