The Flower-Arrangement Art of Japan Blooms With Help of San Diego <i> Sensei</i>
Sadako Oehler has tried for years to promote Japanese culture in San Diego through flower arrangements.
Oehler has studied ikebana , a highly structured form of Japanese flower arranging, since she was a 12-year-old girl in Japan.
In 1947, after graduating from the Ikenobo Art Institute in Kyoto, Japan, she began teaching the art to others, first in Japan and, after 1959, in San Diego.
She is now the chief instructor ( sensei) of what has become the popular Ikenobo Ikebana chapter in San Diego. Today, the chapter which she founded, celebrates its 15th anniversary at the Marriott Hotel next to Seaport Village.
“It was particularly gratifying to see the chapter established, since it was a dream started in 1959 when I first arrived in San Diego and started teaching floral arrangements,” Oehler said.
As part of the anniversary celebration, Muneo Nakamura, a professor from the Ikenobo Art Institute in Japan, will today demonstrate the finer points of stylized flower arrangement at the Marriot.
Friday, the professor demonstrated Ikenobo technique at one of the classes Oehler teaches in Balboa Park three times a month.
“When arranging flowers, we pay attention to the natural characteristics of plants,” Nakamura said through an interpreter. “In Ikenobo, how materials grow in nature is an essential characteristic, and the arrangement should bring out their natural characteristics. Some plants grow curved and some grow straight.”
There are three styles of Ikenobo, rikka , which is an upright style depicting a landscape; shoka , a traditional and modern form that uses one to three plants, and jiyuka , or freestyle.
The different styles must have harmony or balance for the plants to interact or respond to each other, Nakamura said. He compared flower arranging to making a cup of coffee.
“First the coffee is black, it is good but bitter, sugar is added to make it taste better, and milk is added for good harmony and you have a perfect cup of coffee,” Nakamura said. “You use three different materials for a good cup of coffee. In flower arranging, you don’t throw three materials together, you use plants that work well together as the materials do in a cup of coffee.”
In his shoka arrangement, Nakamura chose three plants with different shapes, colors and characteristics. He put the bird of paradise in the vase first because it was the central piece due to its beauty and brilliant orange. The privet was chosen for its light green, which contrasted with the slender yellow iris.
The headmaster of Ikenobo School in Japan, described the art of flower arranging this way:
“The moment a flower is cut, it severs all ties with nature. The time when that flower is about to be placed in a vase, there comes a moment when the soul of the flower and the soul of the ikebana -lover merge into one full being set aflame. That’s the moment when the life of ikebana makes its new birth.”
