Short answers, pulled from the story.
The earliest visual records of bonsai appeared in 1299 with the handscroll painting titled Ippen Shōnin Eden. This artwork depicted dwarfed potted trees and emerged during a period when Japanese Buddhist monks traveled to China and returned with ideas about miniature landscapes.
The five-needle pine known as Sandai Shogun is considered one of Japan's National Treasures and is now over 500 years old. This tree was being trained as a bonsai under the care of Tokugawa Iemitsu by 1610 and remains part of the Tokyo Imperial Palace collection.
Toolsmith Masakuni I (1880-1950) helped design and produce the first steel tools specifically made for bonsai styling during the 1920s and 1930s. One of these tools was the concave cutter, a branch cutter designed to leave a shallow indentation on the trunk when a branch was removed.
The first World Bonsai Convention was held in 1980 in Osaka during the World Bonsai and Suiseki Exhibition. A series of World Bonsai Conventions launched by the World Bonsai Friendship Federation in 1989 have since been held every four years at different locations around the globe.
The Nippon Bonsai Sakufu-ten organized by the Japan Bonsai Cooperative Association is the top competition for bonsai professionals in Japan. This competition is held in December of each year and awards the Prime Minister Award, which went to Hiroaki Suzuki in 2022 for a Shimpaku Juniper tree.
There are at least a hundred thousand enthusiasts in some fifteen hundred clubs and associations worldwide, as well as over five million unassociated hobbyists. Japan has several private and public museums dedicated to bonsai, such as the Shunka-en Bonsai Garden in Tokyo and the Omiya Bonsai Museum in Saitama.