Flowers in an Age of Peace: Ikebana and the Cultural World of Tokugawa Japan

About this event

Ikebana Instructor L. Lin Ko will give a lecture exploring Japanese Ikebana within the historical and artistic world of Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868), combining an illustrated presentation with live flower-arranging demonstration. Ms. Ko will give a talk on Ikebana's history from the 14th century onward, when many other traditional arts like the tea ceremony, garden design, Noh theater, and ink painting emerged. These live demonstrations will illustrate line, space, asymmetry, balance, and the in terpretation of nature. The program then connects these traditions with the modern Sogetsu school of ikebana and its liberating idea that ikebana can be created by any person, at any time, in any place, using any material and any kind of container.

From Muromachi foundations through Tokugawa cultural flourishing to modern Sogetsu innovation, the event urges the audience to think and answer the following question: What happens to the arts when a society moves from an age of war to an age of enduring peace-and how can tradition continue to live through change?