As promised in an earlier post, here are some of the Ikebana (floral arranging) works I saw at the exhibition that also had the preschooler ikebana I posted about the other day.

If you know the slightest thing about ikebana, you'll probably cringe at the total lack of understanding evident in my comments, so you have my apologies up front.

Based on how they were presented, the three works above were clearly by important and/or well-respected people. The middle and right-side nameplates indicate that they were done by the heads of schools (although I'm not sure whether “school” here is in the sense of a place of study, as in “school of thought,” or both).

Nearby was the witch-hazel (mansaku, 万作) work by Marina-chan's Mommy that I mentioned in the earlier post:

The photo really does not do it, or any of these, justice. I suppose the same could be said for a photo of a painting or of a statue: such photos convey the intellectual appearance, but fail completely to convey any greater artistic sense. At least, that's the case with my photos. The photo above makes the arrangement look pedestrian, when it was really exceptionally well balanced. To put it another way, it just made you feel nice to look at it, but I can't same the same for the photo.

I don't know much about plants, so had to look up witch hazel. Actually, I had to look up all the plant names I mention here, including this Japanese rowan (nanakamado, 七竈) display that was next to the one above:

There were hundreds of ikebana arrangements in many styles, sometimes incorporating bamboo, gourds, rocks, and other items from nature. Here's one example from among many.....

The lower flower is tsuwabuki (石蕗) in Japanese, or Farfugium japonicum, neither of which mean anything to me, but it's pretty, so a rose by any other name blah blah blah....

I like how imperfections in the plants were not necessarily avoided, but at times actually embraced...

As I said, there must have been hundreds of arrangements on display, in several large rooms. I had only a short time, made shorter by Anthony being a bit fussy (until Arthur looked after him for a few minutes, thanks!), so I really didn't have time even to enjoy them all, much less photograph even a representative sample (and what I did photograph was under conditions that we'll generously call “less than ideal”).

To head off the inevitable question about the lady left-of-center wearing a face mask, it's common in Japan to wear such a mask when you have a cold so that you avoid passing it along to everyone. It's a basic courtesy that the rest of the world would do well to adopt.

About the crowd, I thought the shirt on the guy in the picture below was a bit, er, avant-garde....

The arrangements on the table in front of them all seem to use non-traditionally shaped vases, which is perhaps avant-guarde as well?

The ones in the shot below feature bamboo of various shapes...

Another one that I liked, from the same group as the witch hazel and Japanese rowan, is an arrangement of mayumi, 真弓 (Japanese spindle, which yes, I had to look up).

It was hard enough to get a picture of the simple tabletop arrangements, but some of the larger installations were all but impossible to capture. There was a large bamboo-and-something-yellow thing on the floor that was quite pretty, but even if all the people were gone (which they weren't) there was no angle that gave any kind of good background....

As I said in the previous post, Ikebana is an art with over a thousand years of history and refinement that is lost on me. But pretty is pretty, and there was plenty of pretty on display, so I wished I could have stayed longer.