"Tiny Timber,"
Oldest-Known Bonsai Film Footage, 1911*



        In February 1910, the first newsreel from CGPC, the newly-established UK arm of Compagnie Générale des Établissements Pathé Frères Phonographes & Cinématographes was released in cinemas.  The following year, the company today known as British Pathé made, among several others, a brief film titled Tiny timber, The Art of the Dwarf Tree from Old Japan.  This 1:18 silent short now-known from a badly decomposed original nitrate film includes the earliest depictions of wiring a deciduous tree and pinching conifer needles, before ending with a shot of a non-containerized miniature landscape -- known five decades later as saikei.  A print was made by the National Film and Television Archive (NFTVA), probably in the 1990s.  That film was then digitized in 2002.

        With much close examination and many viewings by RJB, the film is as follows :
00:01, an intertitle/title card: "Tiny / timber" (in two rows)  "The Art of / the Dwarf / tree from / Old Japan" (in four rows) on the right-hand side; cursive Roman writing of "Pathé / Pictures / 621" (in three rows) in the lower left corner.  The orange subtitle "Copyright British Pathe -- for preview only" (in one row) partly covers the lower left writing throughout the entire film; a slant-style large-leaved deciduous tree in a small and dark deep round pot on a lighted stand/lamp, the tree trunk which is placed diagonal from upper left towards the middle of the image and the pot are spotlighted in the upper left half.
00:09, an intertitle: "These are really / grown-up trees / which were planted / in their youth --" (in four rows) centered, with printed "PATHÉ PICTORIAL" [sic] in the lower left (seen only on the intertitles and in one row); again, the lower left words were partly obscured by the orange text of the subtitle
00:14, a view that is very darkened, especially in the upper right half of the scene, of several groups of potted trees in an assortment of round pots and possibly four stones, the edge of a rectangular pot is seen at the lower left edge; close-together, the pots and stones appear to be on a slightly raised wooden plank platform
00:20, a view that is only slightly lighter than the previous shows a man in a light-colored short-sleeved shirt and a boater hat is squatting just left of center working on a tree in a low round pot; a second person in the center partly hidden by the tree and possibly wearing a darker happi coat is facing the camera just beyond the squatting man and seems to be wiring a second tree; a third person is working just at the right edge of the picture; to the left is a large pot; several posts towards the rear are seen extending up out of the top of the picture, and the tops of some walls and a roof towards the upper center and right indicate that this is all taking place in a courtyard garden area, plants in the background hiding the lower portions of the wall
00:28, a closer view of the man working on the tree, possibly wiring the trunk, the end of this sequence showing some distortion/bubbling
00:35, an intertitle, which is mostly illegible from the now distorted/bubbled film image: "Stunting is a systematic / and patient procedure -- / and a fine art, too -- (in three rows)
00:42, looking over the man's right shoulder while he is wiring a thin branch on a deciduous tree, his left hand stabilizing the branch while his right hand wires, and at the last moment
00:56, white screen
00:57, the lower half of a man in short-legged pants and high white socks on the left side reaching to a potted tree (pine?) in the center in a tall narrow light-colored rectangular pot, while another person similarly attired but wearing a coat also is on the right side -- this must have been a longer shot originally
00:58, a close-up of a conifer being needle-pinched by the man's somewhat dark-skinned hands, which are in the upper-right half of the screen
01:07, a few wide light-colored plank shelves holding several potted trees extend away from the camera; the two planks on the left have trees in round pots, while the two on the right have trees in rectangular containers; a few light-colored wooden posts are seen towards the rear as well as a light-colored Japanese lantern in the upper right corner; the camera pans very slightly to the left and there is some movement of the tree branches from the wind can be seen
01:13, a two-layered thick rough-textured rock with small pine seedlings is seen, the lower layer being roughly rectangular in shape and the upper layer being crescent-like on top of the left and center rear half; 6-8 seedlings are on the top of the crescent, while 2-3 more are on its left front; the rock appears to be positioned on a light-colored wooden plank, with another plank without any items behind it, and then a darker (shadowed?) vertical plank serves as a background
01:18 the film ends with the rock's image. 1 



NOTES

1     Various pages from the britishpathe.com website, including the stills as located by my son, Andrew.

From the break at the 00:56-00:57 mark we can assume that there was at least a little more footage originally.  We, of course, have no way of knowing what other early depictions of bonsai are now lost films, as an estimated 75% of all silent films are lost forever.  Many early films were not believed to be important enough to be archived, others were destroyed when their nitrate film combusted, and others were melted down to recover the silver that went into their stock.  In effect, this is somewhat similar to an unknown number of ancient Chinese bronze vessels -- including the pen from whence bonsai containers are derived -- which, if not safely buried, were melted down for the re-use of their bronze into weapons and other implements over the centuries.

Was this filmed in Japan or at an English nursery in the west London area of Acton (per this 1907 article) where the distinguished artist Segiro Takagi worked?  Might the footage even be of Takagi and his colleagues?  (Footage in the BP collection from 1911 does include film from France, Argentina and Canada, Italy, and India.)

Although the Japan-British Exhibition did take place in 1910, it does not appear that any film footage from that event was made or survives.  It is possible that some of the trees seen in "Tiny Timber" were from that London exhibition.

It is said that the book Sanyu-en Bonsai-Dan (History of Bonsai in the Sanyu nursery) from 1910 was apparently the first such work that treated the subject of wiring.



* The following two examples we present with an asterisk to the above as we aren't ready to give this its own page yet.  The first is indeterminate, while the second is more pre-bonsai material:

We have found from 27 Oct 2021 a video, 1800's Japan [1894 - 1900] by Upscaled History, that does have some earlier glimpses.  The clips herein are colorized and have "sound effects for an immersive experience."  Starting at the 3:02 mark and going to 3:29, a diagonal row of perhaps 9 potted trees is seen to the left behind three geishas ejoying tea.  The trees are not distinct enough to identify, except that possibly for one plant, none are evergreens.  The clip is repeated later starting at 7:57 to 8:24 alongside the original b&w version.



In another colorized and ambient sound-enhanced video, "Japan 1900s Kyoto Osaka Tokyo" by Upscaled History from 30 Dec 2021, starting at the 3:15 mark an going to 3:39 we see an exhibition in 1907 Tokyo showing a long narow table displaying perhaps two dozen small trees in mostly round shallow pots.  Despite the green swath of the colorization, most of the trees are leafless silhouttes.  We don't see any evidence of price tags or other signage, but the crowding of the youthful trees appears to be indicating a commercial offering instead of an artistic display as seen in contemporary exhibition albums.  In other words, we believe this is from one of those open air markets some early-twentieth century travelers described.  The verdant colorized glow also partially obscures the trees that might be on a second table behind, with a walkway for foot traffic between them.  The clip is repeated later at 12:25 to 12:49 alongside the original b&w version.


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