The Japan gallery

When living in Japan, Ena MacFarlane taught English to Japanese schoolgirls in Tokyo. She studied Ikebana, Bonsai (flower arrangement), Sumie painting and Bonkei (miniature landscapes with miniature living trees).

A feature article in the Australian Melbourne Herald (28 April, 1973) 'A fairy world of her own' described how she started Bonkei:

"Then one day, she saw a bonkei landscape lurking in a shop window and was immediately enchanted. She sought out one of the few teachers, Seizan Yaoita, and hired an English-speaking professor of Agriculture as her interpreter.

"She remembers the first lesson was mountain identification; the eight basic shapes of jugo-shun to settai-shun. Then came mountain building with boiled newspapers and the mud from stagnant pools.

Purists make their own houses, trees, boats, people and ducks too, but she discovered that they could also be bought in the bonkei section of Tokyo department stores 'usualy tucked away on the 10th or 11th floors'. There was a whole bonkei underground that she had never suspected".

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16.5 x 21 cm: 'Young Japanese Girl Arranging

Flowers' - in blue mount, not framed.

Probably c. 50 years old. $ Aus 300.

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