Traveling Through Time with Ikebana
A History of Ikebana written by Elaine Jo
History is powerful in the way it connects us with the past and tells us stories of real women and men who have had an impact on the way we experience life today. This history of ikebana is not just a story of the development of styles and techniques, but also of the people behind the art, the cultures in which they lived, and how it changed and evolved through the centuries. Because mostly women are practicing ikebana today, comments are also included about the cultural contributions they made to the societies of their time.
We begin first with flower arranging customs in both Japan and Europe centuries ago when they began to be included in Buddhist temples and Christian houses of worship.
Geographically there arose two separate and entirely different mainstreams of flower arranging, that of the East and that of the West. The eastern one began in China and spread to Japan, where it developed its own highly distinctive styles with Buddhism as a strong influence. The western mainstream lay within the boundaries of the Roman Empire and through the influence of the early Christian Church. Even today, while continuing to evolve, the main influences upon flower arranging throughout the world can still be divided into occidental and oriental, each stemming from their separate religious and cultural backgrounds.
This is the story of the transition of ikebana from its religious roots to the purely personal pleasure we enjoy today.
One of the main characteristics between the two interpretations is that the Japanese prefer asymmetry and use branches and leaves as important features of their arrangements, whereas western styles are more symmetrical and feature masses of flowers with interesting combinations of color.
The story of Japan’s deep respect for nature begins in prehistoric times when religion had been animistic with a strong reverence for nature and a complex system of beliefs in which natural objects like rocks, trees, caverns, springs, etc., were thought to have human-like quantities for the life force they held within and were objects of worship for the spirits they were believed to contain. The ancient indigenous religion, Shintoism, evolved from this close connection to nature. Even today, a religious feeling toward nature exists at some level.
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 6th century, while the Christian Church sustained Western civilization, Buddhism spread from India through China and Korea and into Japan. This new religion complemented Shintoism and was harmoniously assimilated into the culture. Both believed that the relationship between humans and nature should harmonize so as to express spiritual vitality. For almost a thousand years, flower arranging was mostly associated with religion, expressed through the practice of offering floral arrangements called kuge to Buddha.
Confucian tradition also has had a great influence on Japan. Using a figurative trinity, Confucian philosophy teaches that harmony is fulfilled by “one line being symbolic, two lines harmonious, and three lines bringing fulfillment.” This may explain the concept of asymmetry for all the traditional Japanese arts.
Culturally, up until this point in history, Japan was both a matriarchal and matrilineal society. Women had a fairly high level of equality and queens and empresses were frequently in power up until the 8th century. Women could possess common land of their clan and children were often taken care of by the community. In spite of this rather high level of equality, Japanese women, contrary to their European counterparts, did not have the satisfaction of any kind of independent freedom and they were not to play an active role in arranging flowers for several centuries.
Throughout its early history, Japan depended upon the rice crop for its wealth and women of the peasant class who grew rice were important for the role they played in the economy. Taxes were largely paid in amounts of rice, as were the salaries of the samurai who defended the lords and their domains. Feudal lords and the clan leaders who preceded them, recognizing the importance of the farmers, made every effort to keep them from changing status.
During the Heian period between 794 and 1185, Buddhism and Confucianism were firmly established and the domination of men became stronger and stronger. Confucian ideology taught that a woman should obey the males in her family. There were strict rules of conduct between men and women and it was common for communication between them to be through poetry. However, women enjoyed a considerable amount of freedom within their rank. Aristocratic women, dressed in layer upon layer of color-coordinated clothing weighing up to 40 pounds, were expected to be adept at writing, music, and calligraphy and other cultural expressions. They lived their interests centered on palace affairs. Although limited in public life, there were women who were highly talented and gained attention through their cultural endeavors. One such woman was the truly remarkable Lady Murasaki Shikibu, who wrote the world’s first novel, The Tales of Genji, in the 12th century. Lady Shikibu not only gives a detailed description of court life, but includes many passages celebrating the beauty of flowers as well.
Meanwhile, in Europe, women were allowed to maintain their land, but at the same time had little or no role to play within the country at large. Society dictated which jobs a woman could do and her main role would have been to support her husband. Still, there were hundreds of women during that same period who through their sheer strength of character were able to make contributions to the greater good; women such as Blanche of Castile, wife of Louis VIII and Queen of France, a delicate diplomat, clever negotiator, and strong leader, who strove unceasingly to secure and unify French territories during 14th century Europe.
During the 15th century, society changed drastically, much as it did during the Renaissance period in Europe, and practicing ikebana began formally as a secular endeavor. In the beginning, it was an important activity of the nobility and arrangers were chiefly Buddhist priests and samurai. The spirit begin the arranging was one of ceremony and cultural refinement. Into this atmosphere the Ikenobo School were founded. There is a remarkable contract between floral art in Europe where women were the chief arrangers and in Japan where it was an all-male activity.
Ikebana became such a popular past time that great and elegant flower parties were frequently held in the large and beautiful homes of the nobility, with women attending but not involved in the art personally. Illustrations from the period show men gathered together in a general air of refinement admiring each other’s arrangement – all of which were in the Rikka or Tatehana style – flowers standing upright in vases.
The alcove or tokonoma appeared for the first time in Japanese interiors and was an important feature in the home. Ikebana and other works of art were displayed in the tokonoma and became the focal point of the room.
The whole period of thoughtful elegance laid the groundwork for a great aesthetic heritage for modern Japan with the development of Japanese architecture, gardening, tea ceremony, the Noh, and ikebana.
Simple elegance, however, began to give way to a period of great brilliance. The change came rather quickly when Hideyoshi Toyotomi, a new military ruler who was to restore political unity to Japan after over 100 years of war, came into power. He loved extravagance and was responsible for the construction of Osaka Castle, the largest building in the world at that time. His love of the spectacular extended to ikebana and arrangements became more and more ostentatious.
Within this period of lavishness remained a feeling of admiration for simple, tasteful elegance and eventually people grew tired of excess elaborateness and a shift in artistic appreciation took place. The wealthy began to find pleasure in cultivating not just a period of simple beauty, but also an air of apparent impoverishment as expressed through the Japanese traditional aesthetics of wabi-sabi.
This change in cultural preference greatly influenced how the already well-established Japanese tea ceremony was performed. Sen no Rikyu, a great and influential tea Master with personal good taste and refinement, was profoundly influenced by this simple, more humble approach and changed the way in which the tea ceremony was practiced, including a new style of arranging flowers for display. Rikyu believed that the best of floral art is both unforced and natural and he introduced a new style called nageire or chabana. Chabana was and remains to this day a simple but elegant style of arranging flowers for the Japanese tea ceremony.
In the 17th century, political changes were taking place and with the coming of the Tokugawa shogun and start of the Edo period between 1600 – 1867, Japan slowly sank into a very long era of darkness. Some historians believe that Japan, feeling a threat of colonization by the West, closed itself off to the outside world for self-protection. The government became centralized with Kyoto remaining the capital and Tokyo the administrative center of the county. There was a newly prospering merchant class and money flowed more easily. On the surface things were stable and secure but inside of the social structure people were narrowly and firmly bound by an autocratic ruling power. While individual rights were being talked about in the West, in 17th century Japan the custom was to eliminate people who had thoughts different from those in power.
Significant cultural changes, some of which remain to this day, began to take shape with great influence on the arts. The Tokugawa government in Tokyo held the power but maintained the Emperor system and provided money for running the court, which remained in Kyoto until 1868. Wanting to keep the Emperor and his courtiers involved, they turned the management of the arts over to them. The nageire style of arranging was considered too free and intuitive, so the Emperor and his noblemen promoted the formal Rikka style.
Today we still see the Imperial Palace involved in the arts. Our headmaster has more than once been invited to present ikebana at the palace and he has gained status with the Imperial household. Ikebana International, took has close connections to the Imperial household through the support and sponsorship of Honorary President HIH Princess Takamado.
The aim of the Tokugawa government in turning the supervision of the arts over to the court seemed to be to insure national stability by building and maintain a strict hierarchy in every phase of life. Each art was to have its own headmaster who was allowed to grant titles to disciples thought deserving. Titles would be passed on to sons and the sons of sons. In this way, the Japanese arts became family concerns as many remain to this day. Flower arranging was officially known as ikebana and put under the direction of one single family from Kyoto, the Ikenobo.
While Shakespeare was producing great drama in England, Izumo no Okuni was making her debut on the Shijo riverbank in Kyoto with her very unusual dance. The dance was a sensation and she called it Kabuki. Later, the Tokugawa shogun banned this type of dancing for women on moral grounds, but it had caught the imagination of the people and was later restored with the substitution of an all-male cast. Continuing with an all-male cast Kabuki has since evolved into a highly sophisticated theater form of great skill and spectacle.
The Tokugawa shogunate in the 18th century maintained an enforced peace while conspicuous leisure became a symbol of status with life becoming more liberal and enjoyable. Elegantly dressed wives and daughters strolled about at their ease and for the first time were encouraged to become ikebana students. Ikebana then became a light accomplishment, just as playing the harpsichord was for the well brought up English girls in the same century.
As the demand for instruction and rules for creating pleasing natural-like ikebana grew, several different schools began to appear. Among them was the Koryu School, which made a major contribution to ikebana by developing a new style, called Seika. The tea ceremony with the Chabana style of flower arranging was highly regarded and greatly influenced by the Seika form, which expressed naturalness and simplicity by using three basic lines in a gentle slant. One big advantage was that it could be arranged without all the advanced construction techniques required for Rikka. The result was a very simple, beautiful, three branch asymmetrical style, which was easy for the young ladies to manage physically but still maintained a link with the past. For many, this form was the ultimate in artistic beauty and many people practiced it until the early 20th century when the creative ikebana movement began. The various schools of Koryu still maintain their connection to the tea ceremony and teach classes in Chado as well as ikebana.
Flower arranging was a relatively inexpensive pursuit and in an effort to bring the women back into the exclusive name of Teshigahara Sofu, who established the Sogetsu School in 1927.
In 1945 after the devastation of World War II, Japan again began the task of catching up with the West. The feeling was much the same as in the period of the Meiji Restoration. Teshigahara’s free style ikebana techniques became more and more recognized officially and new schools as well as those from the classic tradition, including the Ikenobo and Koryu schools, began to include creative ikebana as part of their curriculum.
Teshigahara and his group’s mission was to “take ikebana out of the tokonoma” which they succeeded in doing, and ideas were brilliant, exciting, and completely novel as new materials such as tropical plants, whole trunks of trees, as well as inorganic material like plastic and metals were used. Ikebana began to appear in public spaces, such as exhibition halls in department stores and lobbies of hotels.
The Ichiyo School participated in this out-of-the-box style cautiously, preferring to show flowers and branches in both a modern and natural way.
The military presence in both Japan and Korea gave the wives of American servicemen leisure time at their disposal and they embraced Japanese arts with great enthusiasm, especially the art of flower arrangement. They rapidly became proficient in their chosen flower schools, and on their return to the States started demonstrating and writing about their new skills. Ikebana International, founded by Ellen Gordon Allen in 1956, was the common ground that united people around the world to join hands in their mutual interest in ikebana to spread its beauty. The organization’s motto became “Friendship through Flowers.”
The Ichiyo School, founded in 1937 by sister Ichiyo and brother Meikof Kasuya, carried the modernization of floral art into new and unexplored areas. For example, previously considered taboo, Mr. Kasuya developed and introduced crossing lines into his arrangements and now, beautiful, graceful crossings lines are highly regarded by all schools. Being interested in combining sound, color and light, he also was the first to create floral state decorations for modern Japanese dance.
In the 1960s, Japanese artists became interested in the unorthodox and began to experiment with new ideas of design. This also influenced ikebana and avant-garde expression became more popular than traditional styles. But by the late 1970s people grew tired of avant-garde concepts and began to discover new merits in the natural beauty implicit in plants while still maintaining the new trends in freestyle ikebana.
When Akihiro Kasuya became headmaster of the Ichiyo School in 1983 he presented his own style of ikebana within the aesthetics established by his father. He is well known from developing techniques for a very precise use of balance which allows the plant material to stand without the use of any support, thus emphasizing through clarity of form the natural beauty of the material as it rises in straight lines from the water. A love of bamboo has had a great influence on his ikebana style and bamboo dominates as the main material he uses in demonstrations and exhibitions.
