Ikebana Class at Sanwa High School

So I had my first Ikebana class at Sanwa last Wednesday, and I was super excited because Ikebana is something I have always wanted to try. There is a really cool class one of the teachers has developed, and basically it's a course on traditional Japanese arts. We had been learning about tea ceremony, but this week was flower arrangement. We got some brief instruction and a piece of paper (none of which I understood) and then a huge bunch of flowers, a vase, some clippers and a heavy spikey thing to stick the flowers into. Then, we were told to begin. I had absolutely no idea what to do so I did what any good Westerner would do, I doggedly found a way to squeeze in all the flowers and arranged them all in the center, in a heirarchical fashion--tallest, shorter, shortest.



These students seemed to have a much better idea of what was going on.



My attempt.



My teacher's redo.
With 5 minutes left in the class, the teacher finally came to survey my arrangement, which I had been gloating over for an hour. She looked at it and exclaimed, "Perfect!" Then she looked at it some more, and tentively at first, but then with more force, started to move around some of the flowers. When it became clear to her that simply bending wasn't going to be enough she asked if I minded if she "rearrange it". I said, of course not. And then she proceeded to completely deconstruct my arrangement, but as she redid it she politely explained why mine sucked and why her arrangement was so much better. You see mine lacked space and atmosphere and was too busy and crowded. Ikebana is about beauty, and beauty is simplicity she explained. I couldn't agree with her more.