Matsuda Seishoen began exporting bonsai around 1970. Exports to bonsai business operators in overseas markets, including Taiwan, account for the greater part of Matsuda Seishoen’s sales now.
MATSUDA says he wanted to work at a trading company in his junior high school days. He has strengthened the export business, making the most of that youthful wish, his English proficiency, and his accumulated experiences.
His customers are often brokers overseas. The brokers sell bonsais bought from MATSUDA to retail stores. For that reason, MATSUDA never fails to consider the brokers’ business convenience based on his view that they are his business partners. MATSUDA has become a Japan Bonsai Association certified instructor, and is actively traveling to overseas markets to guide brokers in issues connected to the sale of bonsai.

Honing skills to make the most of trees to be shipped overseas, and preserving their beauty

Bonsai exporters must satisfy various conditions. Simply carrying bonsai into a country is banned in some export destinations, under their import restrictions. Soil is often one of those conditions. Exporters perform a process called nearai (washing the roots) to remove soil to ensure that their bonsai have no harmful parasites or extraneous animals or plants. Bonsai shipped overseas with washed roots are returned to soil at their export destinations. This process puts a lot of stress on the trees, and many bonsai die from this practice. The act of returning bonsai with washed roots to soil is called kacchaku. As a bonsai garden specializing in export, Matsuda Seishoen is aiming to achieve the highest kacchaku success rate in Japan.

Bonsai are not the only item Matsuda Seishoen exports. In a farm, a crane lifted a big garden pine for the nearai process. Big trees like this one are shipped with their roots covered by moistened peat moss to prevent them from drying after nearai. Washing the trees roots is an every day activity in the winter, when trees are dormant.