Glaucus
Omono
Oh yes, I have updates. Didn't know if I shared these here. For full context, the thing is that in Japan there was a publisher called 'Toshinoha Shobu'. They made a monthly satsuki magazine 'satsuki kenkyu' or 'satsuki research' for about 50 years.
Including the famous satsuki dictionary every 4 years or so. And some one-time themes magazines. Satsuki in Japan is in a huge decline. Like 20 or 30 years ago, it was mostly retired men. I recently saw a blog article about a former Satsuki shop owner, now retired, and he made a blog post about cleaning up some stuff and finding his old satsuki research magazine. He said he threw them all away, except for a few that showed his club member and their exhibition awards. Then it said as the last 2 sentences:
"I was going to keep the only book that included the exhibition, but I decided to get rid of it, thinking that it would probably just get in the way. I decided to get rid of it. Most of the 20 or so members who were there have passed away, and I feel burnt out."
Which is quite a sad statement.
Anyway, a monthly magazine is not sustainable anymore given the size of satsuki in Japan. It used to be huge. So Toshinoha Shobu went bankrupt about last year.
However, there is now a new magazine, apparently one editor from Toshinoba Shobu is involved. This is their website:
satsukibonsai-4s.jp
They put out 4 magazines a year and sell direct to customer only.
Potentially, they could also put out a new dictionary. Maybe they have all the formatting and pictures and the archive that Toshinoba Shobu had. I assume they do because they use the same images from the satsuki dictionary on their website. Though not sure about copyright stuff. So it could be they also have all the rights of the material by Toshinoha Shobu.
They put out their third magazine just now.
I also noticed that on Japanese amazon, you can buy some of the old Toshinoha Shobu stuff in Kindle edition. Including the 2020 dictionary. I assume that a Kindle edition can be converted to a raw pdf which you can just copy. But I guess there might be a limitation there as well. Not familiar with Kindle at all. Which could potentally make it very easy to translate. But, you can only buy it if you claim to live in Japan.
Not sure if that works with credit card because buying something with an address different from the credit card triggers a red flag for their fraud system, I believe.
Also, not sure if the Kindle edition is in picture form or text form.
Some British guy and bonsai & satsuki seller hand-scanned I believe the 2014 edition and put it online here:
Might be better to have just bought the 2020 Kindle Edition. But not sure if Toshinoa Shobu being defunct means it is no longer copyrighted. It doesn't work like that, right?
The people of MiniSatsuki in France actually have a (complete?) archive of all satsuki research magazines. If true, I have no idea how they managed that. But, should be possible with the right connections in Japan and all those elderly people who retired but carefully saved and collected all their magazines wanting to get rid of them. There would be like 51 x 12 = 612 magazines in total.
With technology, it is actually possible to scan these and translate these. For me the challenge has been to go image to text OCR and have it be 100% correct. Because often the software I used made mistakes. Especially with spaces, the size of っvs つ. And some complex compound kanji that have a ton of detail and many similarly looking ones. Which means you need to manually go through it, requiring some knowledge of the Language. And finding the right kanji when the OCR gets it wrong, when you don't actually read and write Japanese takes a ton of time.
So if this new magazine actually has a digital edition, that could be very helpful. On the old Toshinoha Shobu site there was also a link to a digital version of satsuki research. But I never saw how it looked and how useful it was for translating.
You can still go onto Japanese Amazon and buy some random Satsuki Kenkyu magazines:
There is one called さつき樹形の作り方と作品集 that is not a monthlyy magazine, which DSD also shows in his picture of his collection, and that one is about showcasing different bonsai styles.
Otherwise, the monthly magazine could be about quite specific things. Like an interview with some enthuiasts. Or a road trip trying to find naturalized satsuki in the country-side. Or even some articles on non-satsuki stuff. If you have to fill 600+ magazines, not all of the subjects are core and essential.
They had a generalist one about raising satsuki in general, with a title like 'さつき育てる', 'raising satsuki', but that one seems unavailalbe.
Including the famous satsuki dictionary every 4 years or so. And some one-time themes magazines. Satsuki in Japan is in a huge decline. Like 20 or 30 years ago, it was mostly retired men. I recently saw a blog article about a former Satsuki shop owner, now retired, and he made a blog post about cleaning up some stuff and finding his old satsuki research magazine. He said he threw them all away, except for a few that showed his club member and their exhibition awards. Then it said as the last 2 sentences:
"I was going to keep the only book that included the exhibition, but I decided to get rid of it, thinking that it would probably just get in the way. I decided to get rid of it. Most of the 20 or so members who were there have passed away, and I feel burnt out."
Which is quite a sad statement.
Anyway, a monthly magazine is not sustainable anymore given the size of satsuki in Japan. It used to be huge. So Toshinoha Shobu went bankrupt about last year.
However, there is now a new magazine, apparently one editor from Toshinoba Shobu is involved. This is their website:
季刊発行・さつき盆栽専門誌【さつき盆栽 春夏秋冬】
さつき盆栽の専門誌「さつき盆栽春夏秋冬」の公式WEBサイトです。 さつき文化の発展普及、さつき花季展情報など、誌面内容と併せてお楽しみいただけるコンテンツを発信して参ります。
satsukibonsai-4s.jp
They put out 4 magazines a year and sell direct to customer only.
Potentially, they could also put out a new dictionary. Maybe they have all the formatting and pictures and the archive that Toshinoba Shobu had. I assume they do because they use the same images from the satsuki dictionary on their website. Though not sure about copyright stuff. So it could be they also have all the rights of the material by Toshinoha Shobu.
They put out their third magazine just now.
I also noticed that on Japanese amazon, you can buy some of the old Toshinoha Shobu stuff in Kindle edition. Including the 2020 dictionary. I assume that a Kindle edition can be converted to a raw pdf which you can just copy. But I guess there might be a limitation there as well. Not familiar with Kindle at all. Which could potentally make it very easy to translate. But, you can only buy it if you claim to live in Japan.
Not sure if that works with credit card because buying something with an address different from the credit card triggers a red flag for their fraud system, I believe.
Also, not sure if the Kindle edition is in picture form or text form.
Some British guy and bonsai & satsuki seller hand-scanned I believe the 2014 edition and put it online here:
Might be better to have just bought the 2020 Kindle Edition. But not sure if Toshinoa Shobu being defunct means it is no longer copyrighted. It doesn't work like that, right?
The people of MiniSatsuki in France actually have a (complete?) archive of all satsuki research magazines. If true, I have no idea how they managed that. But, should be possible with the right connections in Japan and all those elderly people who retired but carefully saved and collected all their magazines wanting to get rid of them. There would be like 51 x 12 = 612 magazines in total.
With technology, it is actually possible to scan these and translate these. For me the challenge has been to go image to text OCR and have it be 100% correct. Because often the software I used made mistakes. Especially with spaces, the size of っvs つ. And some complex compound kanji that have a ton of detail and many similarly looking ones. Which means you need to manually go through it, requiring some knowledge of the Language. And finding the right kanji when the OCR gets it wrong, when you don't actually read and write Japanese takes a ton of time.
So if this new magazine actually has a digital edition, that could be very helpful. On the old Toshinoha Shobu site there was also a link to a digital version of satsuki research. But I never saw how it looked and how useful it was for translating.
You can still go onto Japanese Amazon and buy some random Satsuki Kenkyu magazines:
There is one called さつき樹形の作り方と作品集 that is not a monthlyy magazine, which DSD also shows in his picture of his collection, and that one is about showcasing different bonsai styles.
Otherwise, the monthly magazine could be about quite specific things. Like an interview with some enthuiasts. Or a road trip trying to find naturalized satsuki in the country-side. Or even some articles on non-satsuki stuff. If you have to fill 600+ magazines, not all of the subjects are core and essential.
They had a generalist one about raising satsuki in general, with a title like 'さつき育てる', 'raising satsuki', but that one seems unavailalbe.
Last edited:
