In 1924, the eldest son of Toshiji died in childhood, and the family bonsai tradition passed on to the three-year old named Yuji, who would one day leave his mark on the art in many places outside of Japan.  That year also saw the founding of Toshiji's Kofu-en ("Garden of the Fragrant Breezes") Bonsai Nursery, located in the southwestern Tokyo suburb of Meguro, with the patronage of the Iwasaki family.  By this time little Yuji had begun growing tiny plants in containers.  He would often also grow young perennials and weeds in containers which his father made him hide from customers in the back areas of the garden. 1

        Yuji Yoshimura as a youth studied all the related traditional art forms of bonsai.  His father raised him with strict discipline, which would go on to foster his unique personality and integrity.  Before going to school every day, for instance, Yuji had to weed the entire bonsai garden.  When he was a teenager, he often roamed the mountains, hills, fields, and lakes of the countryside.  The views inspired him to use his father's lessons to compress the realm of nature into a small space.  Interested in drawing, he later also studied classical music, the guitar and violin.  He later used his music knowledge when he demonstrated bonsai.  He also trained in the traditional arts of ikebana (popularly known as "flower arrangement" but, literally, "dancing flowers") and the tea ceremony.  He was regularly taken to numerous exhibitions to help set up and dismantle.  Yuji graduated from the Tokyo Horticulture School in 1938 where he had studied bonsai, bonkei, and garden art.  When Yuji was 19 years old he rode his bicycle from Tokyo to Omiya Bonsai Village to visit Kyuzo Murata's Kyuka-en Bonsai Garden and purchase a special water pool suiseki.  At that time, the suiseki had been appreciated for over 150 years as an art object.  His family's Kofu-en Bonsai Nursery occupied him until his career was interrupted by five years of army cavalry service, mostly in China as a lieutenant.  Yuji taught his troops horsemanship.  He had a clever red horse which he loved and the horse died saving Yuji's life.  Upon termination, he returned to his home in Japan and in 1948 established his own bonsai nursery, Naka Meguro Kofu-en, separate from his father's.  He continued his grandfather's landscape gardening work.  Then as one of the founders of the Nippon Young Men's Bonsai Association, he often guided foreigners through exhibits of trees and explained the details of bonsai.  He made guide books in English for the Kokufu Bonsai Ten, the National Bonsai Exhibition.  (See also this background on Toshiji, Aug 27 listing.)

         In December 1951 he met Alfred Koehn, a German diplomat who had spent years in China and Japan and was a well-known author of books on Oriental arts and crafts.  Through the interactions with foreigners, Yuji seriously conceived to expand bonsai art into the world.  Now, in Japan at the time, neither foreigners nor natives could take a bonsai class.  The bonsai industry thought that this was a Japanese art whose arcane details Westerners could never understand, whose techniques they could not master, and whose aesthetics they could not appreciate.  The Japanese tradition was for one to become an apprentice under an established master for several years of strict discipline in order to learn all this -- not a short-term proposition.  Yoshimura didn't believe such thoughts and decided to open classes for foreigners who lived in Japan.  The following April 23, Yoshimura and Koehn collaborated to give demonstrations and the first formal bonsai courses were made available to the public and outsiders.  Over six hundred foreign visitors were taught by the pair during the next three years, among them dignitaries, military personnel, businessmen and their wives.  During the decades to come, a few of these students returned to America and continued with bonsai. 2

         Yoshimura also decided to write a comprehensive bonsai book in English.  He needed many scientific tests and high quality photos, which led him to a life-long study of photography.  At last, in 1957, The Japanese Art of Miniature Trees and Landscapes by Yuji Yoshimura and Giovanna M. Halford was published (Rutland, VT and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Co.).  Halford had been one of his first students and assisted him in the English phrasing of the material.  Although there had been a few earlier books in English by this time, this was the first really comprehensive, authoritative and practical work on the subject.  It was received with excitement by those who were eager to learn classical bonsai.   (Sixty years later, the forty-fifth printing would be made of what some have referred to as the "Bonsai Bible in English."  The work has twenty-five color and 245 b&w photos and illustrations.)  The book was the first to translate and classify bonsai styles still in use today around the world.  (See also this background on Halford, Nov 2 listing.)  Because of his unconventional practice, Yoshimura was effectively ousted by Japan's bonsai society.  No one would officially talk about Yuji Yoshimura's achievement in Japan for six decades. 3

        In 1982 Yoshimura conducted a teaching tour for the bonsai clubs in India.  (At some point he also made a teaching trip to Hong Kong and to England.)
        A few years earlier, Yoshimura had been talking with Dr. Creech and others about the idea of building upon the Japanese collection.  In a letter to bonsai teacher Marion Gyllenswan, he stated "...it really calls for an independent body of bonsai authorities to look at the overall situation with private collections of heirloom quality and develop some kind of a plan for their preservation, either as part of a national collection or by local public institutions."  The result was the formation in 1982 of the National Bonsai Foundation, Inc., a non-profit corporation in Washington, D.C. on behalf of the National Bonsai and Penjing Museum of the National Arboretum.  John Naka, Yuji Yoshimura, and now former Arboretum Director Dr. John L. Creech were elected as advisors to the Foundation.  Mrs. Gyllenswan became its first president. 18