FLORAL ARRANGEMENT IN JAPAN 
By Edmund Buckley, Ph. D. 
r I A HE European style of flower arrangement 
is to gather a wide variety of blooms 
into a solidly packed, hemispherical bunch, 
with an eye to harmonious color effect. This 
is the bouquet, it is hardly seen in the United 
States, and its obvious drawback is hardness 
of contour. The current American style is 
either to group a score or so of blooms of 
one kind, in order to obtain a mass of one 
color, or to dispose a few choice specimens in 
a narrow vase without further thought than 
for their individual beauty. But not one in 
a hundred persons ever considers the har¬ 
mony of that color mass with its surround¬ 
ings, or the disposition of these individuals 
as members of a group. 
I he drawback of the 
mass is that its separate 
flowers are braced against 
each other like utilitarian 
wheat in a sheaf, or else 
flop over each other like 
heaps of slain on a battle¬ 
field. As for the individ¬ 
ual flower, it often seems 
to loll helplessly against 
the rim of its vessel like 
the lifeless form of Judy 
just murdered by her 
brutal Punch and flung 
across the balcony. It 
remains true, of course, 
that the beauty of leaf 
and bloom in point of 
both line and color is so 
consummate as to win 
universal admiration 
without good arrange¬ 
ment or even in spite of 
a bad one. But yet there 
is a more excellent way 
which we ourselves may 
devise; and the Japanese 
have shown us at least 
another way, which is but 
little understood,although 
its adoption would much 
extend our resources. 
The Japanese name their floral art ike- 
bana, and it is their own creation, being 
the outcome of two distinguishing Japanese 
traits, namely, ardent love of flowers and keen 
appreciation of line. It may easily pique 
the reader to see supremacy accorded the 
Japanese in two such fundamentals of human 
culture, but so the consensus of qualified 
judges goes. Where else are plum, peach, 
and cherry trees cultivated for their bloom 
rather than for their fruit ? Where else do 
holiday crowds make the month’s bloom 
their chief object of interest; and accompany 
it, not with feasting or revelry, but with ver¬ 
sifying ? Where else has a sovereign gazed 
iMAPLE (TREE) 
TWO TYPICAL JAPANESE FLOWER ARRANGEMENTS 
125 
