A large Okinawa pine sits in front of Satoru and Janet Wakakuwa’s home in Manoa, symbolic of roots, growth and renewal.
Satoru Wakakuwa, 83, first planted the seed for the pine — brought over from Okinawa by his father-in-law more than 40 years ago — into a pot on Hawaii island. It grew into a sapling, and when the Wakakuwas moved to Manoa in the early ’60s, he set the pot in the front yard.
It was not where he intended to eventually replant it, but once he discovered it had set down roots into the ground, he simply let it grow.
By serendipity, it was the best spot for the pine. Today, its branches reach about 12 feet into the sky.
Wakakuwa, a self-taught practitioner of bonsai, has a way with plants.
Traditionally, bonsai is the art of cultivating miniature trees in containers through careful pruning. Wakakuwa took the art outside of pots, using bonsai techniques on the perennial shrubs and trees growing in the ground in his yard.
It’s a creative outlet, according to Wakakuwa, who retired from a full-time job as a heavy equipment mechanic in 1992.
His journey in bonsai began during a sugar strike in the late ’50s that put him out of work on the Big Island, where the Laupahoehoe High School graduate was born and raised.
To remain busy, he and a few friends decided to attend a bonsai seminar in Hilo.
Wakakuwa wasn’t into gardening at the time, but something about the discipline and precision of the art intrigued him.
"It takes a lot of time," he said. "You have to be patient and calm. Once you cut the wrong branch, you have to figure out how to fix it."
Before he knew it, he was buying bonsai books and traveling to Japan to get ideas, and experimenting with shaping plants at home, mostly Japanese pine.
When Wakakuwa sketched out the landscape around the single-story Manoa home, he took inspiration from the gardens he had seen in Japan.
He had a vision of a certain ebb and flow, with a current of plants and "hardscape" flowing like a river around the home. The effect was achieved with river stones, lava rocks and gravel accented by what appear to be rustic cross-sections of tree trunks in various sizes. Wakakuwa created the pieces himself, pouring concrete into molds and then carving wood grain patterns onto the surfaces.
"He got lots of ideas from books," said Janet Wakakuwa, 81. "Fortunately, he has that talent."
Few of the potted Japanese black pines the couple brought from their home in Hamakua on the Big Island survived, so Satoru Wakakuwa turned to azaleas, ixora (West Indian jasmine) with their bright clusters of small flowers and kokutan (Indian hawthorne). He has a particularly fondness for green and golden junipers because of their color tones and textures.
The garden also includes a broad expanse of green lawn, sago palms with their feathery fronds, and white, pink and red camellias.
Besides the Okinawa pine, which is flanked by artfully placed rock pieces, Wakakuwa planted everything else in the garden. Over the years, he spent hours wrapping wire around shrubs and trees to shape the branches and more hours pruning.
Today, he continues to spend mornings with a pair of pruning shears, carefully trimming and maintaining his garden.
In bonsai, he explained, you do not want any leaves on the bottom branches, which must remain clean.
He even shaped an ironwood tree by the back fence into several layers with tufts at the end of each branch.
Wakakuwa knows what he’s done in his yard defies tradition, relaying the story of how a landscaper from Japan once visited and asked, "Why did you do this?"
His answer was simply because he wanted to; it’s his hobby, he says.
When the Wakakuwas visit their son’s home in Massachusetts twice a year to see their grandchildren, he’s also out in their backyard, trimming and creating.
As for the Okinawa pine, it continues to stand the test of time.
Its needles are made into kadomatsu (gate pines) for friends and family to usher in blessings for the new year.
