ABSTRACT
Some may think that the difference between rikkwa and nageire is in the degree of fixity in the forms of arrangement, one being rigid and the other comparatively free. A closer examination, however, will show that there is also a difference in feeling, which comes from the fact that 11ageire tries to represent only one aspect of nature, while rikkwa makes an attempt at representing nature in miniature. True, one may say that even rikkwa can never represent nature in its entirety, however much it may try. Therefore, one may say that the difference between the two schools is after all one of degree, and not of kind. However, the two ways of representation differ widely. For example, take a branch of cherry blossom. In nageire, the arrangement consists of cherry blossoms only, while in rikkwa, besides a cherry branch, branches of the pine, cedar, cypress, bamboo, camellia, and even azalea are used to help in creating a background for a mountain cherry tree. The latter school requires many other flowers or trees in order to show the beauty of one species of tree in its arrangement, while the former needs no such superfluities. Thus rikkwa usually gives one a feeling of overloading the vase, as it combines two or sometimes three species of trees or flowers in its
a~rangement. This perhaps may be overlooked, and yet, to represent a landscape by means of flower arrangement is to approximate floral art to that of gardening. And although landscape gardening may have some elements in common with floral art, since both make use of natural flowers and trees, these two arts-landscape gard~ning and floral arrangementshould be kept distinct and never be confused with each other.
