JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 221 из 270Thosestapled and cutout leaves, glitter hearts, and the rest were put together with the amateurish zest one might find in a fourth-grade classroom. Flowers glued with epoxy mingled with bits of metallic foil and tubes of pink jelly – these are the work of children, not of adults.
While we are on the subject of flowers, there is no better field than this to study Japan's new «manual approach» to the arts, an outgrowth of the educational mode of telling students exactly what to think and do about everything. Flower schools such as Ikenobo and Hara have taken to diagramming their arrangements. Branch A stands at an 87-degree angle to the ground; Branch В turns away at a 32-degree angle to the right; and Branch С leans at precisely 55 degrees to the left. The tips of the branches must end within a triangle, with sides of such-and-such length.
Foreigners, and even Japanese new to a study of traditional arts, may assume that this rigid diagrammatic approach is a part of the tradition. But the opposite is true. Ikebana was a meditative practice, heavily influenced by Zen, taxing to the utmost the artist's spontaneous skill and sensitive observation of nature. Trying to duplicate a geometric shape was definitely not the point. Ikenobo Senno, the founder of the Ikenobo School and the father of ikebana, in the famous preface to his seminal essay on flowers in 1542, went out of his way to stress that the aim of ikebana was not to enjoy a shape but to bring out the basic nature of a flowering branch or tree, thereby mystically pointing the way toward the secrets of the universe.
From this point of view, what we see in modern ikebana books is a denial of everything that ikebana once stood for. The same goes for the modern tea ceremony, which also has manuals demonstrating how to sit and stand at every instant of the ceremony, and where to lay the utensils – exactly so many centimeters from the edge of the tatami, no more, no less. All this has the look and feel of tradition, but it's definitely not tradition. The rules in these manuals are newly invented, written especially for adults who have graduated from Japan's postwar schoolrooms.
All of this is not to say that Japan's culture, modern or traditional, has become hopelessly childish. The great fashion designer Miyake Issey, the inspired flower arranger Kawase Toshiro, the architect Ando Tadao, and other fine contemporary artists have shown a profound understanding of Japanese tradition and combined this with a contemporary outlook.
While we are on the subject of flowers, there is no better field than this to study Japan's new «manual approach» to the arts, an outgrowth of the educational mode of telling students exactly what to think and do about everything. Flower schools such as Ikenobo and Hara have taken to diagramming their arrangements. Branch A stands at an 87-degree angle to the ground; Branch В turns away at a 32-degree angle to the right; and Branch С leans at precisely 55 degrees to the left. The tips of the branches must end within a triangle, with sides of such-and-such length.
Foreigners, and even Japanese new to a study of traditional arts, may assume that this rigid diagrammatic approach is a part of the tradition. But the opposite is true. Ikebana was a meditative practice, heavily influenced by Zen, taxing to the utmost the artist's spontaneous skill and sensitive observation of nature. Trying to duplicate a geometric shape was definitely not the point. Ikenobo Senno, the founder of the Ikenobo School and the father of ikebana, in the famous preface to his seminal essay on flowers in 1542, went out of his way to stress that the aim of ikebana was not to enjoy a shape but to bring out the basic nature of a flowering branch or tree, thereby mystically pointing the way toward the secrets of the universe.
From this point of view, what we see in modern ikebana books is a denial of everything that ikebana once stood for. The same goes for the modern tea ceremony, which also has manuals demonstrating how to sit and stand at every instant of the ceremony, and where to lay the utensils – exactly so many centimeters from the edge of the tatami, no more, no less. All this has the look and feel of tradition, but it's definitely not tradition. The rules in these manuals are newly invented, written especially for adults who have graduated from Japan's postwar schoolrooms.
All of this is not to say that Japan's culture, modern or traditional, has become hopelessly childish. The great fashion designer Miyake Issey, the inspired flower arranger Kawase Toshiro, the architect Ando Tadao, and other fine contemporary artists have shown a profound understanding of Japanese tradition and combined this with a contemporary outlook.