"Earliest Citation for the Word bonsai"

While researching Magical Miniature Landscapes, I came upon a 1900 reference to the word bonsai, a generation earlier than what was listed in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary as c.1929 (from the Encyclopedia Brittanica of that year).  My correspondance with Merriam-Webster Inc. is as follows:

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The new citation showed up in Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary (© 1993, 1996). (Our ongoing researches years later pushed back the date one more year to 1899.)