Please Excuse My Use of Rather Florid Language

Last weekend, I made the trek down to Hachinohe for one of the area's larger exhibitions of Ikebana. Now, before you start making allegations regarding my sexuality, I should clarify that I was somewhat obligated to attend this "flower show," as Baba-San (one of my office-ladies) was exhibiting a piece and even went as far as to provide me with free tickets. Rest assured, I would have otherwise spent my Saturday eating steaks, watching televised sporting events and thinking about monster trucks.

Anyhow, despite the fact that I had to endure the stares of every person in the room (not only was I the sole male in attendance but also the only foreigner, the only person over 5 feet tall and the only person under 50 years of age), the exhibition turned out to be a pleasant surprise. What I had initially expected to encounter were a number of small, simple and linear arrangements. Of course, there were a good number of these but despite their simplicity, many were quite interesting to look at.




Now, what I hadn't really expected was pieces that pushed the boundaries of what I would normally consider to be a "flower arrangement". While I'm assuming that they all adhered to the aesthetic code of ikebana (with which I am not at all familiar), many of them didn't look like flower arrangements to me at all. Rather, they seemed more like art installations that just incidentally used plant life as one of their materials. What I found most impressive was the sense of motion that so many of these pieces had; they really managed to communicate something dynamic using a very static medium.




Another type of arrangement that really interested me was those that juxtaposed fresh flowers with dead or decaying matter. The real irony of a flower show is that while the objects that you are looking at may seem colorful, alive and fecund, many of them are in fact, slowly dying (although I suppose this statement is true of just about any living thing, depending on how pessimistic you are). Anyway, I thought it was interesting to see a few arrangements that tried to address this. The one below used rotting pomegranates, some of them broken open, alongside fresh flowers.


Anyway, I hereby promise that my next entry will be much more manly than this one. Don't say I didn't warn you...