I have a Chinese juniper see attached photo.

I'm considering future planning and I like wind swept style trees.

With that in mind I'm considering pruning the vertical branch where the tree bends.
This is a fairly big branch and taking it off is irreversible. So I'm having conflicting thoughts.

I am aware bonsai is an art and it would be down to my personal taste and i will be the only one who ever sees it but i just wanted other people's thoughts.

Id keep the top of the tree, get rid of the side branch that is thick and turn it into a shohin bun jin tree, my other option that id do is leave it as is and put it in the ground or a much larger container and get that twisted trunk to get thicker, and the overall tree bigger- and get tight foliage to eventually get pads- at least top of the tree has some good movement, at least it looks that way from the pictures

to clarify, the side branch i'm talking about is the one on the right? at least I thing it was on the right in the pictures- it looks to have some revers taper.

sel64@sbcglobal.net wrote:

Id keep the top of the tree, get rid of the side branch that is thick and turn it into a shohin bun jin tree

Interesting idea.

Are you talking about the lowest side branch?

The one I have marked?

it looks good to me, why would you take that brach off? I would bend the right branch downwards to the right cascade and also the left, and bend the top that direction too, that my vision so. I like the tree as it is

why would you take that brach off?

It's growing downwards and has reverse taper

By this size it's easy be wired an placed into another position. The flexibility of the thin branches still permits you to do it.