Page 31 - BSAM 2016 Q3

of his life and his family’s lifelong work in acquiring and processing stones for the bonseki and suiseki mar- kets. His father, Sakai Sahichi, started collecting stones from the Nagara River and later, from the Ibi River to sell along with his bonsai in the late 1880s in Gifu. A small group of bonsai and stone enthusiasts were buying these stones except during a period a er the 1891 earthquake struck Gifu.
Sometime between 1891 and 1907, Sakai Sahichi and Sakai Sasuke, his rst son, began to work stones because they did not sit well. At rst, they removed pieces from the bottom of the stones so they would be more stable. e Sakai family sold many stones at an exhibition held in Tsu City in Mie prefecture in 1907. According to Sakai Teikyo, this event made Ibi River stones famous throughout Japan. As a result, by the Taisho era (1912-1925), more stone dealers opened shops in Gifu and along the Ibi River.
In 1924, Sakai Kanhichi, second son of Sakai Sahichi opened Gaseki-en, a stone shop in Tokyo, to sell more of his Ibi River stones. Kanhichi and his younger brother Teikyo travelled to Kuze Village in Ibi County where they met Mr. Yojuro, a stone collector who had been collecting a two-tone type of stone from the Ibi River. is stone had a narrow light band—a nearly white layer of stone—near thicker layers of dark gray to black stone. e Sakai brothers started making wonderful and very realistic mountain suiseki from this material. ey called these stones Yojuro-ishi. ere is no record that the stone collector Yojuro ever carved this type of stone to make his own mountain stones. e stones sold well and the Sakai brothers ordered larger quantities of the two-tone stone from Yojuro. is gave rise to the Yojuro stone type, one that is recognized in suiseki manuals and displayed in major exhibitions today. Later stone carvers copied the Sakai’s family’s work, but few could ever match the ne cra smanship of a Sakai mountain suiseki.
Sakai’s business continued to grow when he was asked to provide stones to other bonsai nurseries. In 1931, Teikyo purchased a large cutting machine to enable him to meet the demand for stones used as bonseki and suiseki. Bonseki is an art form that used small stones up to 18 cm (7 inches) with white sand to make a temporary landscape scene on a black lacquer oval or rectangular tray. is was a popular art form with several schools that declined sharply a er the major collapse of the Japanese economy in the late 1980s. is coincided with a steady decline in the number of Japanese collectors purchasing bonsai and suiseki.
e 1960s was a period of rapid growth in the numbers of people collecting and displaying stones in Japan. Concurrent many new suiseki clubs were established, as was the Nippon Suiseki Association in 1961. Numerous books were published and peri- odicals started to help inform new stone enthusiasts about this fascinating hobby and art form. ese were primarily books for stone hobbyists written by fellow hobbyists, while others were written or edited
by Murata Keiji, a leading professional bonsai and stone specialist.
Di erent steps in cleaning stones—making them shiny by using a cloth, polishing techniques, adjust- ment of the bottom of stones, and the removal of so er portions of stones—were all subjects presented in the 1966 book, How to Cultivate and Polish Suiseki, edited by Murata Keiji. Inoue Toshihiko, who contributed a chapter in this book about modifying stones, wrote that he was providing assistance to collectors by pre- senting approaches to the modi cation of stones in order to reveal the interest and the beauty of stones. He was advocating expanding the horizon of viewing stones by adding abstract suiseki.
Enhancing stones to make suiseki was not limited to Ibi, Seta, Saji and Abe river stones, but a much wider range of stones were modi ed. A list of 29 di erent stone types from as many areas was listed in Appendix 2 in Inouye Yoshio’s 1966 book How to Appreciate and Take Care of Suiseki. e common name, geological
Top; The Ibi River in Shizuoka is a tributary of the larger
Kiso River. Its broad channel with numerous extensive deposits of gravel, cobbles, small to large boulders, makes it an ideal place to search for suiseki.
Bottom; This Ibi River stone was collected by Mr. Yojiro in the 1930s and was then made into a classical Japanese mountain range with a single tall peak. This stone carver was probably Sakai Teikyo. In Japan, this stone and other similar stones are given the name Yojiro-ishi rather than Ibigawa-ishi.
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