Agreed, it is a gem. Amazing history I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. That would be pretty bad ass to go hunting and find a twisted, gnarly, natural looking Shimpaku bonsai.
Glad you liked it.
It's educational, as well as inspirational.
One may ask the question "How is this relevant to us? We will never have a chance to own such an amazing gem, so we might as well forget about it."
I think it's relevant in the sense that we should see those trees as a standard that we want to aspire for. And not settle for mediocrity.
We may not be lucky enough to find a 3 foot-tall and several hundred years-old gnarled juniper, but we can re-create its power on a much smaller scale, and in a much shorter time. We need to study those trees and learn from them, as well as from the people who work on them.
As far as the S-curve trees are concerned, yes, we can do certain things to mitigate the negative effect of the S-curve. Basically, we can hide a portion of the trunk in question behind foliage. Or we can look at them from a different angle, so we don't see all the shortcomings. But at the end of the day, there are only three rational explanations for not getting rid of the S-curve:
1) we either like the S-curve
or
2) the S-curve adds value to the design, that will be very hard to replace by re-growing the trunk
...and the third one, hopefully doesn't apply to us:
3) we only have a few months to live, so there is no time to re-grow part of the trunk.
So, these are the only three explanations that I can think of, which would make us leave the S-curve as it is.
Let me briefly address each.
1) If one likes the look of the S-curve, then power to him. It's hard to argue with taste. But he should expect a lot of disapproval from the bonsai community, and for good reason. He can still enjoy the peculiar shape of his tree in the privacy of his backyard, without showing it to anybody.
2) The S-curve may be unattractive, but it may have other redeeming values, such as ancient bark, interesting deadwood, or other unique features, such as a hollow trunk. In this case one should mitigate the curves by partially hiding it with foliage and growing new branches in places that make the curve less uniform. Also, there are many cases when the so-called S-curve is not a clean-cut, simple S-curve, but a borderline case that somewhat reminds us of the S-curve. In this case, it will be much more worthwhile to work with what we have, assuming that the existing trunk has other attractive features due mostly to the age of the tree.
3) ...sorry, this one needs no further explanation.
In every other case in which the above 3 do not apply, the best is to remove part of the curve and re-grow the trunk. This is particularly important in the case of young trees, where the whole thing can be re-grown in a few years time and then we don't have to spend the rest of our lives trying to hide this shortcoming. It's like having a car with a bad engine. Are you going to keep patching it up every other year, or just get a new one and be done with it. But if you have a bad engine that is vintage, and has historical value, than it may be worth trying to fix it.
