JAPANESE 

 FLOWER ARRANGEMENT 



CHAPTER ONE 

 HISTORY OF IKE-BANA 



TO those interested in Japanese art 

 there is no better means of following 

 its progress than through the his- 

 tory of Japanese flower arrangement. No 

 other art is so distinctively their own, bear- 

 ing so few traces of foreign origin. 



It is curious that Ike-bana, which is un- 

 doubtedly of religious birth and in Japan an 

 outcome of Buddhism, should have left no 

 impression in India, Ceylon, or Korea, where 

 Buddhism was a national creed long before 

 it reached Japan. Although the Japanese 

 like to credit India with the origin of their 

 flower arrangement, in its present form it 

 would not be recognized by the land from 



[21] 



