"I visited the gardens at Yokohama.  The shapes in which trees and shrubs and bushes are trained are all that is fantastic and odd.  Some are quite pretty, but I am not willing to admit that on the whole they are able to compare in beauty of effect with nature's own handiwork.  The Japanese gardeners excel in their ability to dwarf trees.  What is familiar to us as a bush with delicate stalks under their training becomes in appearance a dwarfish tree.  How they do it I do not know, but suspect it is managed under the act of grafting or budding.  Some bushes they will train the branches to grow downwards, drooping like the willow.  In the next jardinier the same plant will be seen with the branches shooting straight upward, and yet another will be found bent and twisted and trained in a most fantastic fashion.  It is all done by means of cords tying the young shoots into shape and furnishing an illustration of the old saw, 'As the twig is bent the tree's inclined.'"  1

1     Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 28, 1896, pg. 19.