Kokufu-ten 2023 Picture Thread

[Yamabudoudanshi]

Went to the first half of the kokufu-ten this past Saturday. Forgive the quality of the photos. Just using my phone and in no particular order. I didn't take pictures of everything just stuff I found interesting.
I'll be going to the second half this Saturday and update this thread then.
If you have your own photos, feel free to add them.

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

More.

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

Even more.

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

Annnnd.... more.

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

Last ones, I promise.

 

[Cajunrider]

Thank you for taking the time to show us the trees.

 

[actionflies]

Awesome pics! Thank you...

 

[BobbyLane]

when you see a lot of these shows, if you take away the maples with the pancake nebaris, more often than not youre left with trees that have somewhat mediocre nebari/rootspreads.
we are often led to believe that your nebari has to be of a certain 'standard' to 'pass'.
I often dont see this even in the high prestige shows. unless youre talking about the pancakes. not to take nothing away from the high quality trees though and hard work that goes into producing them. just making an observation

 

[R0b]

Thanks for sharing much appreciated.

@BobbyLane and I don’t even like pancake trees.

 

[Michael P]

The first forest took my breath away.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

Amazing! Thank you so much for sharing!!

 

[Glaucus]

Nice work! Btw, 4k videos of the 97th Kokufu-Ten will soon be on Youtube, I am sure.

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

The first forest took my breath away.

The trident maples? I probably spent the longest at that display. I couldn't quit staring.
The shohin group was equally impressive considering the scale, but it was too dense to get a good picture with the lighting above it.

 

[Srt8madness]

Thanks for sharing the pics. Learned a lot!

 

[Soup Dragon]

Thank you for posting these!

Do you know if there is a list of exhibitors accessible on the web somewhere? I have looked, but couldn't find anything. Of course, my search terms were in English, not Japanese, so I probably only searched a tiny sliver of sites on this topic.

 

[Michael P]

The trident maples? I probably spent the longest at that display. I couldn't quit staring.
The shohin group was equally impressive considering the scale, but it was too dense to get a good picture with the lighting above it.

Yes!

The primary tree is great by itself. There were so many other trees, all in very convincing spacing and relationships to each other. It had the wild natural look of a real forest, but at the same time the smaller trees were organized into three distinct groups. The group in the back gave incredible depth and forced perspective. Without doubt the person who did this is a master.

 

[Mikecheck123]

Stunning!

 

[GGB]

when you see a lot of these shows, if you take away the maples with the pancake nebaris, more often than not youre left with trees that have somewhat mediocre nebari/rootspreads.
we are often led to believe that your nebari has to be of a certain 'standard' to 'pass'.
I often dont see this even in the high prestige shows. unless youre talking about the pancakes. not to take nothing away from the high quality trees though and hard work that goes into producing them. just making an observation

kind of an aha-moment for me when I first realized not all high level bonsai had terrific (bicycle spoke) nebari. Spread the word

 

[Yamabudoudanshi]

Thank you for posting these!

Do you know if there is a list of exhibitors accessible on the web somewhere? I have looked, but couldn't find anything. Of course, my search terms were in English, not Japanese, so I probably only searched a tiny sliver of sites on this topic.

Nothing came up in Japanese either. Even the pamphlet they give you when you enter doesn't have names on it. Just numbers of each display/species. Of course the plaques in front do, but even some of those are anonomous. The Chinese ones are all listed under a collective group name.
People here are big on privacy. I doubt they'd be online at all. Your best bet if you're looking for names is to watch videos.

 

[Glaucus]

Usually, the name of the artist is on one of the the boards in front of the bonsai. Of course, that is not as helpful as an online overview file. I know that this is not uncommon to have. For satsuki bonsai, there are usually lists available of all competition/show entries and authors/artists. If the Kokufu Ten has an official website (in Japanese of course), you might have some luck looking around there. But as Yamabudoudanshi says, he checked and it is not available(?)..