Ōmiya Bonsai Village Explained

Ōmiya Bonsai Village
Type:	Bonsai nursery
Nearest City:	Kita-ku, Saitama, Japan
Coordinates:	35.9278°N 139.6315°W
Area:	330,000 square meters
Created:	1925
Open:	Daily except Thursday

is the nickname for the bonsai nursery precinct in, Kita-ku, Saitama, Japan.

Bonsai Village is located near Ōmiya-kōen Station on the Tobu Noda Line. It is closed on every Thursday (unless the Thursday falls on a national holiday).

History

• 1925: Settled by a group of professional bonsai gardeners who originally lived around Dangō-Zaka (Hongō) area in Tokyo and emigrated from there due to the crucial damages caused by the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923, at Toro and Hongō settlements of Ōsato village.^[1]
• 1940 Ōsato village merged with other villages to form Ōmiya city.
• 1957 The official suburb name was given to the precinct.
• 2001 Ōmiya city merges with other cities to form Saitama City.
• 1 April 2003 on the day of the government designation of Saitama City Bonsai-chō was classified in Kita-ku.

Today

The Bonsai Village consists of about ten privately owned bonsai gardens. From the early 1990s, Omiya Bonsai-cho has seen a slight contraction in the number of nurseries. As of 2007, the Bonsai Village contains hundreds of thousands of bonsai trees in a site of about 330,000 square meters.^[2]

The area also contains the Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, opened in 2010. The museum has indoor exhibits of bonsai history and art, as well as an outdoor area with a number of bonsai specimens. Some of the museum's materials were drawn from the Takagi Bonsai Museum of Art in Tokyo.^[3]

Each year, Bonsai Village holds the "Great Bonsai Festival" from 3–5 May. During the festival the area is packed with many bonsai devotees from all over Japan.

See also

• Bonsai - Japanese tradition of growing miniature trees in containers

External links

• Bonsai in Japan Omiya
• The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, Saitama

Notes and References

1. Web site: from The Birth of Bonsai Town 盆栽町 Bonsai-chō no Tanjō. Shōzō. Kusakabe. 1996. ja. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20070926222809/http://www.geocities.co.jp/HeartLand-Apricot/7111/sub2-2.htm. 26 September 2007.
2. Web site: Enjoying Bonsai and Horticulture . Japan National Tourism Organization . 2012-11-10 . dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20121119024517/http://www.jnto.go.jp/eng/location/rtg/pdf/pg-812.pdf. 19 November 2012.
3. Web site: The Omiya Bonsai Art Museum, Saitama . Japan National Tourism Organization . 2012-11-10 . dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20130105212531/http://dl.gov-online.go.jp/public_html/gov/pdf/hlj/20110901/30-31.pdf. 5 January 2013.