Noh no Ikebana arrangements by Hamanaka (right) and other group members used farm tools from Shindo (left) collection. (in Musashimurayama city, Tokyo)
Members of Noh no Ikebana Tokyo Group held an exhibition of their arrangements on October 6, 2016 at one of the major plant nurseries in Tokyo, Shindo Sogo Engei Center in the city of Musashimurayama. The arrangements are created using agricultural products and old agricultural implements to give new lives to the obsolete instruments. The leader of the group, Yoko Hamanaka, 73, said, “I hope this will offer an opportunity for everyone to recall a life on a farm in old times.”
The old farming utensils belong to Susumu Shindo, a 65-year-old manager of the plant nursery. He has been collecting old farming tools such as daihachi guruma (a large, wooden two-wheeled cart) and sickles for almost 50 years and the number of his collection now reaches into the tens of thousands.
At the exhibition, you see arrangements that will call up an image of how those instruments are used in those days. They include an arrangement with a spinning wheel and mulberry leaves and another one arranged in ittomasu (a wooden bucket to measure rice).