HISTORY OF IKE-BANA 



While in China the Buddhist priests were 

 the first instructors of flower arrangement, 

 in Japan they only introduced its crudest 

 elements. For a long time the art had no 

 meaning and was merely the placing in 

 vases, without system, of the flowers to 

 be used as temple offerings and before 

 ancestral shrines. Again quoting Captain 

 Brinkley, "What the Buddhist imported 

 from India was based on equality of distri- 

 bution — what the Japanese conceived was 

 a method based on balance of inequalities." 



The first flower arrangements worked out 

 with a system were known as Shin-no- 

 hana, meaning central flower arrangement. 

 A huge branch of pine or cryptomeria 

 stood in the middle, and around the tree 

 were placed three or five seasonable flowers. 

 These branches and stems were put in vases 

 in upright positions without attempt at arti- 

 ficial curves. The general form was sym- 

 metrical, and this is what we find in Japanese 

 religious pictures of the fourteenth century. 

 It was the first attempt to represent natural 



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