| An American undergoes a gruelling apprenticeship to a Japanese master.  Photograph by Suzanne Saroff for The New Yorker It’s easy to be jealous of people who have found an obsession—a passion that gives a life direction and focus. In this week’s issue, Robert Moor writes about Ryan Neil, who grew up in a small Colorado town and discovered bonsai—the Japanese art of shaping miniature trees—through the “Karate Kid” movies. After college, Neil travelled to Japan to apprentice with Masahiko Kimura, a bonsai master who is regarded, Moor says, “as a once-in-a-generation genius.” Moor originally intended to profile Kimura, but he grew interested in the “quarterback-y white guy” who was his former apprentice. “As I talked more with both Neil and Kimura over the intervening years,” Moor explains, the piece “evolved into a story about the master-apprenticeship relationship—the ways humans shape trees, but also the ways we shape one another.” Neil is still reckoning with the harsh discipline and fanatical commitment that Kimura demanded of him, and that he willingly submitted to: “Neil recalls Kimura once saying, ‘I’ve never even seen anyone do something this terrible. I would have to try to do something this terrible. Why are you so stupid?’ ” Our obsessions can twist us in ways that we don’t expect, both beautiful and ugly. —Michael Agger, culture editor Support The New Yorker’s award-winning journalism. Subscribe today » | 
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