Ikenobo Anniversary Event in Boston, March 2013

 Boston hosted a very special ikebana Event (yes, that's with a capital E) last week, and I'm glad I was there, along with hundreds of other ikenobo teachers and learners, Japanese and American. The Fairmont Hotel, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Back Bay Event Center were filled with a bilingual hubbub, spectacular flowers and arrangements, solemn ceremonial and memorial moments, and laughter, too, during games and workshops.

Rikka workshop

First, a brief explanation. This blog is about ikebana--Japanese flower arranging, which has a long history and great cultural importance in Japan--and how learning it has opened a door into the world of Japan for me. I began learning about ikebana in a general sense in 2010 and then about a year ago also began studying a particular style of ikebana, ikenobo. (See previous posts for more on this subject.)

Rikka workshop

 

Ikenobo is the oldest style of Japanese flower arranging, proclaiming its 550th anniversary of recorded history in 2012. Just recently the headquarters of ikenobo in the United States in San Francisco also commemorated its 45th anniversary. Both anniversaries were celebrated in Boston this month--hence the Event. Boston was selected because it is the sister city to Kyoto, where the headquarters of ikenobo in Japan is located.

From the right: Ikenobo family, Sen'ei Ikenobo, Yuki Ikenobo, and Masafumi Ikenobo 

 

Memorial ceremonial arrangement

sunanomono rikka arrangement

The ikenobo headmaster, Sen'ei Ikenobo, known as the iemoto, and his daughter Yuki, his designated successor, traveled to Boston for the three-day celebration, accompanied by many Japanese teachers and students.On the agenda for the Event were two days of ceremonies and one full day of workshops. Among the ceremonies was a memorial on March 11 to the thousands who lost their lives in the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan exactly two years before. The workshops were taught by Japanese professors in the three particular forms of ikenobo: rikka, shoka, and free-style. Rikka is the oldest and most difficult to master of the forms.

To the left is my effort at shoka shofutai, the classic original form of shoka. Below is my effort at free style, which is actually more challenging for me because there are no set rules to follow--the arranger is free to style it as he or she wishes, while keeping in mind the basic tenets of ikebana.

Learning ikenobo in an unusual way

It's an odd relationship for a teacher and a student of an art form that requires a focus on visual effects. But it's not odd for our time and place.

I had been a member of Ikebana International Chapter #41 in New Mexico for a while before I decided on a style of ikebana I wanted to study in depth. Hey, when I started out, I didn't know anything about any styles. The members who led the meetings and performed arranging demonstrations came from several different style backgrounds, most often ichiyo.http://www.ikebanahq.org/ichiyo.php  But after I read about the history of ikebana and also visited the U.S. headquarters of ikenobo in Japantown in San Francisco, I made a decision. I wanted to study ikenobo.http://www.ikebanahq.org/ikenobo.php

My choice was based on the fact that it is the most ancient of the styles, and I felt challenged by hearing that studying it would be difficult, especially learning the most complicated form, rikka. But when I first saw an actual rikka arrangement, not just in a photo, I knew I had to learn eventually how to create one myself.

First I needed to find a teacher. So I wrote to the headquarters office in San Francisco and asked for a referral to a certified ikenobo teacher. Mr. Kenneth Endo wrote back and told me that there was no certified ikenobo teacher in New Mexico but gave me the names of chapter presidents in Colorado and Arizona to get in touch with. I did so, and that was how I found my teacher, Dan Dell.

I suggested to him that he could make assignments, and I could send him photos of my arrangements for his corrections and comments. For nearly a year now, we have done all our communications by email, photography, Photoshop, and phone calls until we have an opportunity to meet in person.

The photos to the right show how this works.The assignment is to learn how to create shoka shimputai, a more modern version of the traditional design known as shoka. My arrangement is shown at the top. (I normally use background paper to photograph, but my homemade roller for the paper is not working, so I simply photographed against a white wall.) Dan's editing of my arrangement is shown at the bottom. He is telling me in his comments and in the edited photo that my flowers need leaves (important in ikenobo). He also added some more Scotch broom to the top left of the arrangement because the purple flowers seemed to be hiding the Scotch broom, so it required more emphasis. He also erased some of the purple flowers.

He provides emailed comments, comments on the edited photo itself, and also explanations by phone when he is trying to introduce something new or complicated.

This way of teaching and learning ikenobo is unusual, but it works well for us. We have email and digital photography and photo editing available to us. We also live in the Mountain West, where many miles can separate a teacher in Colorado from a student in a rural state like New Mexico. I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn from Dan, even though we have yet to meet in person.

Search for the place of origin of ikenobo, Part 2

In the last post I wrote about finding in Kyoto Rokkakudo, the ancient temple that is considered the birthplace of ikenobo, the oldest style of ikebana. The photo to the left is of small statues near the temple. Of course I was drawn to them immediately. They are so appealing under their knitted caps. But I have also done some research in order to find out what these little figures represent. I don't think I understand well enough to explain their presence, but I hope some of my readers will know much more than I and can offer some comments that will help us all to comprehend better their meaning.

However, I do now know that the red color of their bibs is related to this: "According to Japanese folk belief, RED is the color for 'expelling demons and illness.'"(http://www.onmarkproductions.com/html/color-red.html) So the red color expresses the hope for recovery and protection from evil influences and sickness. 
While this has nothing to do with the history of ikebana (as far as I know), I found the presence of these well-dressed little statues near the Rokkakudo Temple an irresistible draw.



Another aspect of the temple's environment and one very directly associated with the history of ikebana is the pond pictured to the right. I certainly didn't expect to see a pond with swans gliding on it located between Rokkakudo Temple and the featureless skyscraper next to it. The building you can see in the background of the photo is the headquarters of the School of Ikenobo, and this little pond is said to be the source of its name. Ike means pond, and bo refers to a Buddhist priest's hut. Thus, ikenobo would mean a priest's hut next to a pond, apparently the place of origination of the floral art form first practiced here.

Search for the place of origin of ikenobo, Part 1

I was prepared.

I knew I would have some time in Kyoto to search for Rokkakudo Temple, the birthplace of ikenobo, the style of ikebana I'm studying. I figured I could find it if I pored over maps and learned how to get near it on the metro. My ikenobo teacher, Dan dell'Agnese, is acquainted with Kyoto and told me that the trick is to find a small temple hidden by surrounding tall buildings. He said I could be right there and miss it.
So I studied the metro map, found the correct stop,  and invited two companions to accompany me, figuring that six eyes would be better than two. So Barb, Annie, and I followed the city map exactly and knew we were right where the temple should be, but, as predicted, we couldn't see anything but ordinary, modern business buildings. The Rokkakudo is decidedly not ordinary, being six-sided, with ancient, sloping tile roofs. So it should immediately stand out from everything else. It didn't.  However, two contemporary modern buildings did: a skyscraper with the sign in the above photo in its window saying  "Origin of Ikenobo Ikebana" and a Starbuck's. The sign told me we were near our target. A young woman was standing in the doorway of the Starbuck's ready, in welcoming Japanese style, to greet us with "Irasshaimase." I figured we should ask her for help and hope she understood the question. At least I knew, more or less, how to pronounce the temple's name. So we approached her, bowed, and I asked.

She smiled and pointed inside the Starbuck's. I thought, "She didn't understand the question. She just wants us to come in." Then I saw through the open door of Starbuck's a glass wall, and on the other side of that wall were tile roofs slanted in many different directions. Rokkakudo. Right there, on the back side of Starbuck's. But how to get there?

We hurried around the corner, and there it was. The picture above shows me standing by a weeping willow in the courtyard in front of Rokkakudo. Tied on the branches of the willow are slips of paper with fortunes and hopes written on them, among them one handwritten in English from me--that I would be a good student of ikebana.

Next door to the temple is a skyscraper office building that houses the headquarters of  the ikenobo school of ikebana. The sign I saw sits in its window. But the temple Rokkakudo is where it all began.

Happy New Year, Japanese style

In Japan the New Year is greeted with celebration and good wishes, just as it is in the USA, but the displays and decorations are quite different. Instead of having New Year's symbolized primarily by champagne glasses, Times Square, and confetti, in Japan one sees floral arrangements known as kadomatsu. Though these arrangements differ greatly in size, color, and ornamental additions, they traditionally include three plants--pine, bamboo, and plum (branches). If you google the word kadomatsu and then look at the images a search will bring up, you can see the enormous variety of the kadomatsu displays.


"According to Iwao Nagasaki, curator of textiles at the Tokyo National Museum, many patterns that first came from China...acquired unique meaning to Japanese over the years." The Chinese thought the grouping of these three plants "just symbolized the innocence of three good friends in winter: bamboo, which never breaks, the pine, which stays green all year, and the plum, which blooms while it's still frosty. One thousand years after the pattern entered Japan...this trio of plants became auspicious." * In other words, this popular arrangement of the three plant friends in Japan has become a physical, floral wish for good fortune in the coming year, particularly for strength, longevity, and the ability to flourish in spite of adversity.

The arrangement you see above is my first attempt to put these three plants together in a shoka design (a particular type of ikenobo arrangement) especially for New Year's. The bare stem to the left is ornamental purple-leaf plum (Prunus cerasifera). If I had access to plum branches in Japan, they might already have burgeoning buds on them in that milder, moister climate. Unfortunately, here in drought-stricken, high-altitude New Mexico where the temperatures are well below freezing, the plum is just a branch with buds waiting for warmer days still a month or two away. The plant in the center is a cold-hardy bamboo I grow in a container, located right now on my back porch with a furniture blanket wrapped around its feet. It's a Fargesia 'Rufa.' I've trimmed many of the bunches of leaves off of it in the interest of a more sculptural shape, one of the techniques of ikebana. The plant to the right is pine, an ornamental that was planted in my neighborhood, not necessarily native.

A traditional kadomatsu arrangement is usually placed outside the door of a home or other building. The plants are often arranged in a rustic-looking container with a special rope called shimakezari and a shide design attached. So, my three friends above are arranged in a container that is a hollowed-out mulberry branch from my yard (I always save some of what the arborists remove from my trees). A neighbor who is a woodworker hollowed enough of the tough wood out so that I could use it for an ikebana container. I've wrapped natural twine around the container several times and hung my own crudely homemade version of shide, a zigzag design often found on Shinto shrines and other places or objects sacred to Shinto. The result is an ikenobo ikebana version of a New Year's display that is older even than ikebana itself, a display that extends a millennium back into Japanese history and the introduction of Buddhism into the country.

I like the idea of beginning my new year with such an ancient tradition rooted in the natural world. Happy New Year to you!

*This quote comes from Singer, Jane. (1995). "Meaningful Motifs: Japanese Patterns and Designs." Ikebana International Vol. 39, No. 2: 8-16.

What is a tokonoma and why does it matter?

This blog is about ikebana; the process I, a novice, am going through to learn an ancient and complicated art form; and the simultaneous process of becoming fascinated by and learning about Japan.

When you walk into an American living room, you are likely to notice first a fireplace and mantel or a conversation area with couches and chairs around a coffee table or maybe a giant TV screen or, at this time of the year, seasonal decorations. If you were to walk into the traditional Japanese counterpart of a living room, you might first notice the tokonoma. One of the very first things I learned about ikebana is that it is placed in the tokonoma, an alcove in a room in a Japanese home or in a teahouse.

The photograph below left shows such an alcove. I took it of the Sekka-tei Tea House near the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. A tokonoma is intended for the display of art--usually a scroll, and to the left of the scroll, an ikebana arrangement. Unfortunately I don't read Japanese, so I don't know what the plaque to the left of the scroll says, but it is located where one would expect to find an ikebana design. Note the natural wood post on the left side of the alcove; it's called a tokobashira. It's made of nandina wood.

The image to the right is entitled "Guest room in Hachi-Ishi" from Japanese homes and their surroundings by Edward S. Morse, first published in 1886. Again, you can notice the alcove with its hanging scroll, ikebana arrangement, and tokobashira. (I'm indebted to Wikipedia Media Commons for making this image available.)

So what can we western practitioners of ikebana learn from this?
We can recognize that ikebana was intended to be a prominent feature in the decor of the room where guests were welcomed. It had a special place of honor in the home or during the tea ceremony. It was considered an art form. I think this helps us to understand better how ikebana has developed and the importance it has in its native culture.

Flower arranging with children

 Ikebana International (http://www.ikebanahq.org/), the international organization of people who love the floral art form given to the world by Japan, has recently been emphasizing the importance of teaching ikebana to children. Like other art forms that children learn when young--such as painting, working with clay, singing--ikebana can imbue youngsters with appreciation for beauty and for their own creative abilities. They can also learn to really see the world of plants around them, not just their colors but also their sculptural organic forms.



At Thanksgiving, when I visited my son and daughter-in-law and two young granddaughters in California, we did what I hope will continue whenever we're together--make a flower arrangement. In the first photo above, I'm in the garden with my older granddaughter, Skye, age 2 1/2, selecting flowers to cut (Grandma's in charge of wielding the scissors, of course). California weather is conducive to lovely flowers all year, so we had no trouble finding pretty ones that Skye liked even in November. Then we went inside to put the flowers into a container that my son, her daddy, had crafted some years ago. I didn't want to use a kenzan, too sharp for little fingers, nor did I want to use oasis, so I crumpled up a bit of plastic mesh and put it into the container so that we could insert the flowers into it. We also gathered some leaves. Skye actually put the flowers into the container as she wanted, and the second photo shows me trying to insert some leaves that she also wanted but whose stems were too short. We had fun doing the arrangement (actually she did two, as we had flowers left over), she was very proud of them when we finished, and they graced the Thankgiving dinner table. Not ikebana yet, but a beginning pleasure in selecting and arranging plants.
The photos are courtesy of Laura and DeLesley Hutchins.