Madeline | cultural-craft-

Object

For my art piece, I created an ikebana arrangement. Ikebana is the traditional Japanese art of flower arranging. I followed many of the rules; for example, I had stems of three different lengths; the tallest, called “shin”, represents heaven, the medium-length, called “soe”, represents man, and the shortest, called “hikae”, represents the Earth. However, I left the flowers to wilt, which is not typical practice. I took photos of the arrangement every day to document the wilting process. Click here to see the GIF of this transformation.

Ikebana, the traditional art of flower arranging, has been practiced in Japan since Buddhism was introduced in the early 6th century. As an art form, it has evolved as Japan has evolved through the centuries. Ikebana has seen multitudes of changes of government, from a feudal society to that of an empire to a democracy, and has adapted alongside. These adaptations have resulted in many styles of ikebana, the first of which is called ikenobo. There are many parallels between the political and cultural shifts of Japan and the evolution of ikebana.