Excerpt

Nobody runs in Japan. A nation of naturally fast walkers has no reason to pick up its pace — except for emergencies like a closing train door. During four years in Tokyo, I've found the only runners besides myself to be senior citizens chasing a better cholesterol count or teenagers trying to make the high school team.

I was jogging at a pathetically slow pace, the better to weave between office workers without toppling them. The city is crowded, and there are unwritten rules about knocking people down. At the Roppongi Crossing intersection, I had to wait two minutes for the light to change so that I could cross over and go three blocks farther to the Kayama Kaikan, the landmark building that was headquarters for one of Japan's leading schools of flower arranging.

Being late was my fault. I had lingered over my morning coffee, watered all my plants, and found a half dozen other reasons to dither so that, in the end, I had to jog from the train station to the school. As my aunt Norie frequently points out, my job as a freelance antiques buyer gives me control over my time. Not making it to the Kaikan on time was my own passive-aggressive response to her demands.

Being half Japanese and half American, I sometimes struggle to fit in with my father's Yokohama relatives. I can understand most of the jokes in movies, drink tea correctly, and even prepare my own pickled daikon radishes. Still, I was clueless about ikebana, the uniquely Japanese art of flower arrangement. The last time I overstuffed an urn with plum branches, my aunt stared at it without speaking. Shortly after that, she informed me that I was enrolled as a part-time student at the Kayama School.

I'd only been to the Kayama Kaikan twice, but that was enough for me to learn that in ikebana, less is more, and I'd rather spend less time arranging flowers in an overheated classroom and more time outdoors. That Tuesday morning in late March was bright, with temperatures in the sixties — almost time for the blooming of sakura, the cherry trees that are Japan's premier symbol. A weatherman on the morning news forecast that Tokyo's cherry trees would be in flower within five days, remaining at peak condition for no more than two weeks. Viewers were encouraged to plan their cherry blossom viewing parties accordingly.

"But watch closely, because clouds over the moon may mean storms over blossoms! " the reporter added with a corny smile. He was making a double entendre — referring to the likelihood of rain as well as offering up an old proverb that meant misfortune is lurking even at times of great happiness.

Prediction is a risky game. During the time that I've lived in Japan, I've marveled at the number of people who insist that the future is determined by patterns held in the past. I'm not good at predicting things; that sunny spring morning, I had no idea what I was running toward. The next fortnight's cherry blossoms would bring a storm of death and revelation that none of us — my clever aunt, the proverb-quoting newsman, and especially not I — would have expected.

Flower shop exterior in Kamakura.

The Kayama Kaikan was erected twenty years ago, as Japan soared toward the bubble years of vast economic expansion. The mirrored asymmetrical tower spoke of innovation, wealth, and power, the traits that had made the Kayama family successful in teaching ikebana from the start. Aunt Norie had told me that the land-owning family began the school in the 1860s, when the second son in the family abandoned training as a Buddhist monk but decided to teach others the flower-arranging skills that he had learned in a temple setting. The students of the first iemoto, or headmaster, were the socially ambitious wives of Japan's growing merchant class — similar to today's students, almost all the wives of salarymen. The Kayarna School, and many other ikebana schools like it, prospered into the twentieth century, but following World War II there were few Japanese women with the money and leisure to continue flower-arranging studies. Not ready to shut down, the iemoto invited an American general's wife to see his work, and after she enrolled, many other officers' wives followed. The Kayarna ikebana philosophy became more avant-garde and international, spurred on by the new student body and the current headmaster, who traveled the world. By the late 1960s — a full century after the school had opened its doors — the small cement building where my aunt had trained had grown into a low-rise, which was demolished in turn to give space to the shiny new tower.

Walking through the school's giant glass doors, I faced the school's signature artwork, an installation of jagged sandstone boulders. It would have been interesting to climb through the rock garden to examine the flower arrangements peeking from various crannies, but I didn't have the time. I stepped into the large elevator with mirrored walls and a polished granite floor and sailed up to the fourth-floor classroom.

Outside the classroom doors, tall containers sat filled with a lavish assortment of flowers and branches. At my previous class I'd learned that each student was allowed to choose a bunch of line materials — branches that would give a dominant shape to the arrangement — and another bunch of smaller, decorative flowers to use as an accent. Today I took the last bunch of cherry branches and some white asters and slipped into the classroom, where a dozen women were working at the two long tables. Aunt Norie was snipping loganberry branches with her best friend, Eriko Iwata, at a table close to the teacher's lectern. Norie and Eriko were like two peas in a pod: both slender housewives in their early fifties who looked about thirty-five. They wore their hair in pageboy styles and had chosen similar gabardine slacks and silk blouses with the sleeves folded over, exposing their hairless forearms. Why the two of them felt it necessary to shave their forearms, let alone wear silk blouses to a flower-arranging class, was beyond me. I was dressed in a short-sleeved striped cotton sweater over a pair of flared jeans I'd picked up at a teen boutique in the Harajuku district. Even though the jeans were a nice deep black, I doubted my aunt would be fooled into believing they were proper ladies' trousers.

"Ah, at last it is Rei-san!" chirped Eriko, who had known me long enough to greet me by my first name.

Aunt Norie put down her ikebana scissors with huge, scary blades and looked me over. "Did you have some trouble getting out at the correct subway station?"

"No, I'm just late. Sorry," I said, perching on a hard stool next to her.

"Your hair looks nice. But such big, ugly shoes!" Norie winced as she regarded my running sneakers. I'd once pointed out that trendy teens were wearing Asics like mine with everything from jeans to dresses, but she countered that a twenty-eight-year-old antiques dealer had no business looking like an eighteen-year-old.

"If it weren't for these shoes, I'd be even later. The shoes allowed me to run," I said defensively.

"You haven't missed anything," Eriko soothed. "There is plenty of time to make an arrangement before Sakura-san starts the lecture. Just take a container from the shelves the way you did last time."

If I'd been at home, I would have arranged the three branches of cherry within a few minutes. But the school environment made me nervous, and the branches wouldn't lean the way I wanted. In the narrow earthenware vase I'd selected from the classroom shelf, they fell against one another instead of stretching up gracefully the way Aunt Norie's and Eriko's flowers did. Was I the only one who couldn't do it? I looked over at the next table.

Lila Braithwaite, a tall Canadian who was president of the foreign students' association, had mixed cherry with azalea in a very professional arrangement. Nadine St. Giles, her French friend, had chosen the same materials but wasn't quite as confident using them. I most admired the work of a student called Mari Kumamori. Mari was working with heather, its pale purple blossoms making a delicate contrast with a celadon bowl.

"I like Mari's bowl. Are there any more?" I asked Norie.

"It's not the school's property. She makes her own pottery and must have brought it from home. Anyway, the container you have is correct for your particular arrangement. Just make a slanting fixture, and your branches will stand straight."

Slanting fixtures, I'd learned the week before, had something to do with cutting a gash into one of the branches before inserting a second, shorter branch into the cut. It was an act of precision that I barely managed before turning to my aunt for help with the next step. After all, she had earned a Kayama teaching degree more than thirty years ago and was in class primarily to be with her friends.

"I can't get it to look like the picture in my book. And I can't read the directions." Because I was a beginner, I had to form my arrangements after models in the Kayama School's handbook, earning a stamp for each of them before I could progress to the next one. I could understand the diagrams but very few of the words.

"Oh, I didn't know you couldn't read Japanese!" Eriko sounded mournful. "Let me see if I can find a lesson book with an English translation. That's how Lila-san and Nadine-san are able to study."

"Rei-chan, it's up to you to make your arrangement," my aunt reproved. "If I move the branches for you, you will not have the confidence you need. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes. And very soon, when you progress to freestyle, you will have to follow your own intuition."

I was working slowly, distracted by my aunt's conversation, when the class was called to order by Mrs. Koda, director of the teaching program.

"Sakura Sato has graciously agreed to demonstrate to us today the challenges and joys in working with one floral material. After she speaks, I will provide an English translation for our visitors." Mrs. Koda spoke English loudly, as if the foreigners in class were not only language-impaired but deaf. I was pretty sure this wasn't meant to be malicious, but it was unfortunate that she'd labeled Lila and Nadine visitors instead of bona fide members of the school. I could understand why Aunt Norie had been adamant that I sit with her and Eriko. She didn't want me to get stuck in the gaijin ghetto.

I hastily finished off my arrangement by throwing in a few asters. My aunt was smiling at Mrs. Koda — she had known her for more than thirty years, ever since my aunt began studying ikebana. I'd seen photographs of Mrs. Koda at that time and found it amusing that she still had not updated her hairstyle from the hard black beehive of her younger days. Despite her thick, upswept bouffant, Mrs. Koda had a drawn, weary-looking face. She had moved slowly when she gave me a tour of the school the previous week, using a cane to help her along. She'd been apologetic that the school's headmaster, Masanobu Kayama, was away in Luxembourg, and she promised I'd have the chance for an audience with him soon.

Mrs. Koda bowed deeply to Sakura Sato, a woman of Aunt Norie's age dressed in a pale pink suit. As Sakura stepped briskly to the lectern and slapped down a notebook, her elbow flew out, causing Mrs. Koda to lose her balance and bump the edge of a student table. The crowd of ladies murmured with concern, and Aunt Norie came forward to take Mrs. Koda's arm. Seeing no more stools in the classroom, I jumped up from mine so that the elder lady could have it. Aunt Norie gave me an approving glance. Feeling vindicated, but realizing that I no longer had a place to sit, I retreated to the back of the classroom. A young Japanese man in a Greenpeace T-shirt and jeans was rummaging through a drawer containing ikebana supplies. I perched in a corner that was not in his way and offered a clear view of the teaching demonstration.

"Could someone please lower the blinds? The sun distracts me," Sakura said, and Eriko, who was close to the window, slipped over and drew the venetian blinds across the view of the Tokyo skyline.

"As many of you have heard already, the iemoto chose the name Sakura for me when I was selected to become a teacher twenty-four years ago." Miss Sato delivered a thin, superior smile to us, cementing my instinctive dislike of her. "I had made an arrangement entirely from cherry blossoms that actually was contrary to the mixed materials required for the lesson. I could not help myself — the cherry was so beautiful. It was as if nature had entered me and taken hold."

Everyone in the room appeared rapt. Some women were writing down her words in their Kayama School notebooks.

"Kayama-sensei laughed when he saw my arrangement and said that since I liked cherry blossoms so much, he would give me the formal teaching name Sakura, to celebrate the flowering cherry tree that is our national treasure. And whenever sakura is in bloom, he asks me to come up with something special to decorate our headquarters."

Aunt Norie had been given the flower name Hasu, which means "lotus." She used it only for identification in ikebana exhibitions. I doubted I'd be in the Kayama School long enough to receive a flower name. Dealing with my own Japanese name, simply pronounced "ray," had been an enormous complication during my California childhood. There were even troubles in Japan, since the name was written with an unusual kanji character meaning "crystal clarity."

"As you know," Sakura said, breaking my meditation, "it is a great challenge to communicate the essential essence of ikebana — heaven and God above man — when the flowers in question are all identical. How does one guard against massing the same color and shape? That is our question for today." She glanced at the table in front of her, which was bare except for an industrial-looking black container. "My flowers do not seem to be here, nor are my ikebana shears. Could someone please bring them?"

I glanced at the casually dressed young man, since he looked to be the most likely candidate for gofer in the room. He wasn't bad-looking, with his high cheekbones, golden skin a little darker than mine, and eyes the color of espresso. He stared back at me blankly when I gave him an inquiring look. He clearly didn't feel obliged to help Sakura.

Slightly embarrassed, I looked away but stayed put. I wasn't doing Sakura any favors, not when she'd caused Mrs. Koda to trip.

Mari Kumamori, the woman who had brought her own celadon dish from home, stood up and spoke softly, using a supreme honorific. "Please, Sakura-sama, what may I bring you?"

"Cherry," Sakura barked. "Or have you been sleeping while I was talking?"

Mari blushed and hurried to the outer room, where I'd chosen my flowers. She was gone for a long minute, and Sakura filled the time by chattering about how the headmaster had personally asked her to arrange flowers for a big installation in the lobby of the Imperial Hotel.

When Mari came back, she hurried up to the front of the room and whispered something to Sakura, who laughed shortly and addressed the room.

"Apparently cherry is such a popular flower that all of it has been taken for use by the class members. Well, I shall improvise. That is the challenge that faces us when we create ikebana. Remember, the term literally means 'living flowers.' We must endeavor to make the most realistic arrangement with the natural materials to which we have access."

Her curt words made me feel guilty. I'd been the one to take the last bunch of cherry blossoms from the bucket in the hall. I could race to my flower arrangement and retrieve the few inferior branches I hadn't cut up, but I could imagine how nastily she'd accept them.

"I shall use forsythia," Sakura said to Mari, who ran out again to bring a big bunch of green-and-yellow branches to the head teacher.

"Please strip the bottom foliage," Sakura commanded her volunteer assistant. Mari had given her own scissors to Sakura, so she was forced to rip off the offending leaves with her bare hands.

"With this design, I am creating a contrast between light and dark," Sakura lectured. "The container is a length of industrial drainpipe that I painted black — an unorthodox material that reflects Kayama innovation. Any material, from drainpipe to wire netting or paper, may be combined with fresh materials. In all situations, the characteristics of the materials must be vividly expressed. If the container and flowers do not truly relate, the work will not be beautiful."

I was skeptical about whether Sakura could succeed in making the crude drainpipe beautiful. She thrust forsythia branches into holes she had punched at various places in the pipe, and in the end created something that looked remarkably like a black centipede with long, furry yellow legs. Had the cherry branches been available, the centipede would have been pink.

Sakura showed her versatility by arranging more forsythia in an antique stone container, a fairly classic arrangement that made everyone sigh in relief. She took a few softball questions from the audience, then set out to evaluate each student's arrangement, the entire cluster of women following her to hear the verdict. She praised the first few students profusely but was surprisingly cool to Lila Braithwaite.

"By stressing the idea of shape, you are losing the truth in the flowers' nature," Sakura told Lila, who nodded, looking unhappy when she heard Mrs. Koda's translation of the words. On the other hand, Lila's friend Nadine's lopsided arrangement of cherry blossoms received a sweet smile and a compliment on her sense of color. Both women had identical flowers. Why did one get praise and the other criticism?

Sakura dismissed Mari Kumamori's heather arrangement by saying the pale green of the celadon was wrong for the flowers. Mari bowed very low and thanked Sakura for her wise criticism. I was curious what Sakura would say about Aunt Norie's arrangement. Last time Norie had mentioned that she, Eriko, and Sakura had begun studying together the same year, but Norie and Eriko had both taken off for more than a decade to care for their young children. Sakura had never married, so she stayed active in the school, rising to become a staff teacher. My aunt had a second-degree teaching certificate, and Eriko had a third-degree one, which meant that both of them were entitled to teach classes in their homes but not at headquarters.

Aunt Norie had assembled a mass of fluffy white rhododendrons accented with loganberry vines. The arrangement in a blue glass container had a snappy feeling, like my aunt herself.

"Well, Shimura-san. You used rhododendron." Sakura paused. "It is such a common bush."

She bowed slightly, and Aunt Norie responded in kind. When Norie's face came up, I read the irritation. Sakura had not criticized her outright, but she had refused to give anything that could be regarded as praise. She had said rhododendrons were common. Nothing more.

Eriko received similar treatment. "What a classic container," Sakura said, tapping the smooth length of bamboo springing with long grasses and camellia blooms. She moved on, not saying anything about the flowers. It was hard for me to understand why my aunt and Eriko even bothered with the class, except that Sakura Sato wasn't always the lecturer. The previous week Mrs. Koda had given an interesting talk on hanging arrangements, and her comments when she'd come around the room had been helpful.

Now it was my turn.

"You are Norie Shimura's niece from California? I see the family resemblance." Sakura took in my clothing, then the cherry branches I'd arranged. I wondered if she'd deduced that I'd taken the last bunch.

"May I touch your arrangement?" Without waiting for my answer, Sakura reached in and touched the branches making up my slanting fixture. They fell apart, but she wasn't interested in that. "The parts of these branches that are underwater still have some foliage." She tapped the tiny cherry blossom buds that I hadn't removed.

"I didn't want to cut off anything that might bloom later," I explained. There was such a deathly silence in the room, I wondered if I'd accidentally used an impolite word. Then I realized my flaw: I was the first person who had even tried to make an excuse for doing something wrong.

"As you arrange more flowers, you'll notice that water contaminated by plant matter will begin teeming with bacteria, thus cutting short the life of your arrangement." Sakura whisked sharp scissors out of her suit pocket and began snipping away the buds. "The lines are wrong in this arrangement. Isn't this lesson eight, basic slanting style?"

"It's lesson three, actually. Basic upright style," I said.

"How far your branch leans! Much greater than fifteen degrees."

She removed my branches and rearranged them according to her desire. "It's surprising to have junior-level students in this advanced class. Normally one must have completed the beginner's book to. enroll in this class. I suppose family connections make such things possible, neh?"

Without bowing, Sakura moved on to the next person. She'd kicked the stuffing out of me, but I knew that she was right. I'd been admitted because Aunt Norie had sweet-talked Mrs. Koda.

But my aunt couldn't let things go. In a pleasant but firm voice, she called after the teacher, "Sakura-sensei, is there a problem?"

Without turning around, the head teacher said, "I'm afraid I must discuss the next student's arrangement. If you have questions, please see me after class."

"The school's teachers certainly have changed their attitude since I was a young student. I apologize to everyone present for you," Norie called out clearly. With her falsely courteous manners, Aunt Norie was picking a fight. Everyone knew it. The other women in the class started studying the floor.

Sakura finally decided to face my petite aunt. She had a six-inch advantage and a voice that carried a cool, menacing authority. "Norie-san, you know the motto for the school is 'Truth.'"

"'Truth in nature!'" Norie interrupted. "Flowers should be the focus of our class, not personal situations."

All the women began talking at once, as if to cover up the breach of etiquette that had occurred. Only the sharp crack of a wooden stick stopped the verbal explosion.

"Be quiet, please!" Old Mrs. Koda returned her cane to her side and spoke up in her quavering voice. "It is time for our class tea break. It is time for everyone to be quiet and drink tea!"

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All content © 1998-2008 Sujata Massey.
Photo of Sujata by Jim Burger.