begins by being utterly hopeless in decoration
and in colour. One cannot possibly compare this meaningless attire, this
independent mass of colour forming no pattern, and probably placed upon
the table by a servant without care or thought, and with an utter
disregard to form and order,--one cannot compare such decoration with
the beautiful, scientifically-thought-out flower arrangements of Japan.
All that one can say is that one is art and the other is not. Nature
grabbed at in this crude Western fashion and stuck into a vase is no
longer Nature.

Consummate naturalness is brought about only by consummate art, and is
not the result of accident. If a bough of blossom growing in the midst
of other trees is taken from Nature and placed in a vase, however
beautiful it might originally have been, it must necessarily appear
awkward and out of place. One of the chief characteristics of Japanese
flower arrangement is its resemblance to the flowers in a state of
nature. A bough or a tree in a Japanese room looks exactly like a real
bit of Nature lifted bodily out of the sunshine and its own particular
surroundings, and placed there. Nature appears to be almost commonplace
as compared with the work of a great Japanese master in the art of
flower arrangement, and almost less natural. A master, after having
received a clear impression of the way a certain bough appears in the
midst of its background of Nature, is capable of taking that single
bough and of twisting it into broad beautiful lines, one picking up with
the other in such a way as to convey the same impression to you as it
did when growing in its own sunny garden.

[Illustration: FLOWER-PLACING]

"But why are there so few flowers in this Japanese method of flower
decoration?" complains the Westerner. "Why only one branch of blossom in
a pot?--why only one?" Because you can see that one and enjoy it,
provided that you have the capacity to see at all, which the majority of
people have not. One beautiful bough or one beautiful picture should be
ample food for enjoyment to last an artist for one whole day. If there
were twenty beautiful boughs, or twenty beautiful pictures, you would
look from one to the other and would necessarily become confused. You
would leave that room feeling thoroughly unhappy, and with the same sort
of headache that one gets after spending an afternoon in a
picture-gallery. To enjoy one of these pictures or flowers, and to
concentrate one's thought