Rockm: I agree with most everything you wrote. However, I am surprised by the complete dismissal of lost methods by so many on this form.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I completely agree that most of the writing and methods during that time period are silly and should be taken with a grain of salt and should be left to the past. I also agree that there is a lot of information that was lost in translation or misrepresented to the west. And just for clarification, most of the accounts that I have been reading are not texts that have been translated but are accounts from westerners visiting China and Japan during that time period. Again, sources that are at high risk for misinformation.
With that being said, those are the earliest firsthand accounts that I personally can access and when those accounts were being written, miniaturizing trees had been a practice that had been in existence for around a millennium. And as I said , this is not an isolated account, using ants for example comes up time and again when you read these early accounts. I also disagree with the statement that “we've "lost" stuff to history is true in only a fraction of examples.” The amount of knowledge and information that humans have lost to history is enormous, you cannot even calculate it. So I think it is ignorant for us westerners to completely dismiss these ideas simply because they are old and no one had tried them recently or be of the thought process that every method we have now is superior. That is all I meant to ask in this tread.
SMH, Don't know where to begin....To think that the amount of stuff we've lost to history is a vast well of better ideas is a very Romantic way to think. It's fun to think that way, but in reality it's a pretty empty claim. You can't prove a negative.
We have gained FAR more knowledge than we've lost. We have capitalized on past knowledge spectacularly.
It is extremely easy to dismiss the idea of smearing honey on an air layer to produce some kind of miraculous tree, if you've been doing bonsai for more than a few years and understand the basics of growing and propagating them. That practice is silly, won't work and if you have any real bonsai knowledge, you know that from what you've seen and done yourself. This crap brings to mind the stupid myth of the Chinese and Japanese growing bonsai seeds inside of a mandarin (or whatever kind) orange peel, trimming the roots that emerge from it's perimeter to stunt growth. That was also once a widespread popular bonsai myth. It was inferred (wrongly) from an old Chinese book on gardening too.
Also anyone with any bonsai knowledge--even back then--would know the best way to get a picturesque air layer is to start with picturesque material.
To the uninitiated or inexperienced, bonsai is fraught with mystery, hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo, and sometimes hideous misinformation. The preconceptions beginners bring with them include the (Sorry) "Ancient Chinese Secret" ball of wax, as well the "Eastern thought is superior" to western science myth. Eastern beliefs and practices have no superiority to Western. They are just different. To say Westerners have no understanding or appreciation of the natural world ignores a vast well of history that clearly shows otherwise.
Bonsai, as you know it is only 100 years old or so. Wire and metal tools revolutionized it at the turn of the 19th century. At about the same time, Japanese society opened up to allow common people to practice the hobby that had once been the privilege of only the upper classes. It is not the thousand year old practice many believe it to be. Before the wire and metal tool revolution, bonsai were mostly just potted plants that had no real form imposed on them. To our modern eye, they were pretty ugly. To western eyes back then they were grotesque and that idea crept into just about every western description of them--including the text you have quoted. It is tainted with the Western racism and bias of the time. Should be mentioned that that racism was also present among Asian nations as well.
I grew up in rural Va. where all manner of "traditional" cures, medicine and the like were common. Some had some merit, most were Bullshit and/or fanciful tales. I understand wanting to keep a grasp on "old ways," but have no illusion about their assumed superiority.
FWIW, I am a "traditional" bowhunter. I use a recurve, single string "stick" bow that is vastly inferior in power and efficiency to modern compound bows with pulley systems and precision sights--forget comparing it to the ever-efficient rifle or shotgun.... If I shoot a deer with my bow, it will mostly likely then entail hours of tracking to find the animal. A modern compound bow is vastly more effiencient. It can probably kill the animal in a much, much shorter time, requiring less pain on the animal's part and less tracking on the hunter's part.
I understand the drawbacks, but I choose because I WANT the disadvantage because I enjoy the challenge. Old doesn't make it better. The modern bow was constructed from the knowledge gained from, literally, tens of thousands of year of hunting history with the technology.
I saw them myself. Huge suckers! But I agree with you. Some techniques are best left in the past.
