By Neny Regino
MANY of those interested in flower arrangement have discovered Ikebana, the Japanese classical art of arranging flowers dating back to the 13th century.
For some time in ancient Japan, the art of flower arranging had no meaning, and functioned merely as the placing of flowers in vases to be used as temple offerings or placed before ancestral shrines, without any system or meaningful structure. The first flower arrangements were composed using a system known as shin-no-hana, meaning ‘central flower arrangement’.
Ikebana would evolve through the centuries and transform beyond the mere arranging of flowers into this deceptively simple and exquisite art. Ikebana uses carefully chosen blossoms, greenery and other flora to convey a particular feeling or emotion to the viewer — just as a painting or sculpture would.
“Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul. “-Luther Burbank, US botanist and horticulturist
Many schools and styles of Ikebana have developed through the centuries, their adherents and practitioners dispersed throughout the world. In the Philippines, the most popular school of Ikebana is the Sogetsu, founded in 1927 by Sofu Teshigahara.
I had very little knowledge of the art when I first started. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one can do an ikebana arrangement with whatever materials are available. We were taught that each flower has its own expression; all flowers are different in shape and Ikebana enhances this difference.
I was cajoled into enrolling in the course by my late husband who was with me when I read about the course being offered at Sunshine Place.
Without even asking me if I was keen to join, he signed me up and paid for the whole course. On the first day, we were taught to familiarize ourselves with the various kinds of flora and the basic rules to form an arrangement with several styles called kakei. There are two styles: basic upright and basic slanting, which are the foundations of all other variations. There are variations like Moribana (8 variations) and Nageire (6 variations).
Height, width and depth are the three elements that form Ikebana. Three main stems are considered: shin, the longest, the next longest is soe and the shortest is hikae. In an arrangement, a needle point holder is used to fix the materials in place. This is called the kenzan.
The length of the stem is determined by the size of the vase. Branches are used as shin and soe while flowers are used as hikae. Also, the flowers used are in odd numbers i.e. 1, 3, 5, etc.
My teacher, Marc Tomas, is a mechanical engineer by profession but found his calling as a Sogetsu Ikebana teacher. He is a former president of Ikebana International Manila Chapter who began training in Ikebana at the Ayala Museum in 2002 under a Japanese teacher. After finishing the basic course, he was encouraged to pursue more lessons and, desiring to do public demonstrations, he trained to become a teacher.
“The goal of Sogetsu is to allow you to create Ikebana anytime, anywhere and with whatever materials are available,” says Tomas. “It’s about creativity; it is about expression.” Indeed, as the Japanese name for the practice roughly translates, Ikebana is “making flowers come alive.”
After several sessions, I joined the Ikebana Sogetsu Society Philippine Chapter, headed by Margot Perez. This Ikebana teacher was hands-on and hers is the traditional class of flower arranging. During weekends, I would join a small group at her residence where she taught us her own style of self-expression through Ikebana. “There’s something meditative and even spiritual about it,” she explains. Most of the materials that we would use during class were plucked from her garden fronting her residence. Margot taught us the use of branches, twigs, dried leaves, twisted trunks of trees.
When I would join my husband during his jogging days, I would stop to pick up dried branches, twigs, roots, driftwood, and earned the moniker “basura queen.” Of course, he would jokingly tell me that maybe he shouldn’t have enticed me to enroll in the Ikebana class. But when I pause to think about how I started loving flower arranging, I would remember the novel The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. She wrote: “If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” For indeed, wherever I go, I always look around and see that each plant can be material for an Ikebana Sogetsu arrangement.
Akane Teshigahara who has written 5 Sogetsu textbooks which we students use, says: “There is one thing I want you to be careful about. Don’t get caught up in the photographic exemplifications of arranged flowers. What you see in the photograph is merely a single example of a shape.”
For indeed as the French author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote in The Little Prince, “It’s the time that you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important.”
