Ever wonder what the origin of the word “Bunjin” is?
The Japanese bonsai Masters have left no stone un-turned categorizing every type of form a tree could be and have given each of them a name. They didn’t want to waste trees so that had to come up with a name for every shape. Most of the names are pretty forthright and straightforward. They didn’t invent the Broom form. They just called it as the saw it. They didn’t want to call it “Street Tree” even though that’s what it really is. Who would pay big money for a “Street Tree”? They are a very formal people and generally well-educated and wanted a single word because it’s easier to memorize a single word than a bunch of words, so Broom works on several levels. Cascade is another example of one word pretty well covering the form of a tree that looks like it’s falling out of a pot. Obviously, a Cascade Pot is a pot that is tall enough for a tree to fall out of and not hit the ground. There are lots of trees that are tilted at a funny angle that could never be forced to be a “Formal Upright” and they didn’t want to throw them away so they had to come up with name. “Slanted” covers that pretty well. A Slanted tree is one that looks stupid if planted correctly. But you don’t have to toss a Slanted tree, you sell it to people who are screwed up or have no taste because it is a formal style of a bonsai tree! What can you call a tree that doesn’t look healthy, or pretty, or like a tree that someone would buy? Remember, bonsai is business in Japan and if you throw away every tree that looks like crap you could lose your butt. If they could come up with a proper name for a crappy tree, there would always be someone stupid enough to buy it. Crappy is the proper descriptive word, but from a marketing standpoint, it just doesn’t work. They fished around for a long time, brainstorming on weekends, month after month and nobody could come up with an honest word that had marketability. Eventually, a guy suggested they use an acronym. You can get away with murder with an acronym: only the sound of the pretend word had to be marketable. The more complex the actual combination of words, the better. People could memorize “Crappy” pretty easily and they needed to use so many honest words that nobody would be able to remember what the acronym words actually were. Bunjin is the little moneymaker Japanese acronym. B.U.N.J.I.N really stands for Basically Unusable Nut Job Ignominious Nothing Burger.
The rest is history.