Tokyo Olympics – Show our guests our warm-hearted hospitality
The year of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics Games has come. “Let’s welcome the athletes and guests from abroad with our Noh no Ikebana!” A Tokyo-based Noh no Ikebana Group is trying to create the nationwide movement to celebrate the 2020 Games with Noh no Ikebana arrangements. Here, we share some of their initiatives and attractions.
-Noh no Ikebana Group in Tokyo: we want to show that Japan is a nation with people with warmth.
“Tokyo is going to welcome a great number of international guests for the Olympics and Paralympics games. With our Noh no Ikebana arrangements featuring our lovely agricultural products and old farm instruments, we want to show them that Japan is a nation with people with warmth,” a 70-year-old leader of a Tokyo-based Noh no Ikebana club, Shizuyo Yagasaki said.
The members of the Tokyo Noh no Ikebana Group are going to make many arrangements for their gardens, farmland, and offices of local agricultural cooperatives this year. In towns and cities hosting pre-game training camps or road races, their arrangements will be exposed to many travelers and athletes.
Noh no Ikebana is an art founded by Toshie Yokoi (1912-2004) in the 1960s. There are fans and artists all over the country, currently in older generations. Yagasaki wants to spread the movement to all over Japan to attract new followers, as well. “The locations can be small places like a farmer’s restaurant or a guest house you own, and your arrangement can be small ones to fit in such locations. I hope many of you to join us and make your own arrangements,” she said.
<Containers> A fire pan and a part from a kotatsu (a table with a heater installed underneath)
<Materials> Bamboos, pines, carrots, a daikon radish, Chinese lemons, eggplants, horse radishes, diplocyclos palmatus, rosemary, sweet potatoes, etc.