Like the tea ceremony, the art of flower arrangement (_ikebana_) developed into a philosophy under the patronage of the shōgun Yoshimasa in the fifteenth century. For several centuries it has been studied and cultivated as a refined accomplishment. Miss Averill in “Japanese Flower Arrangement” tells us that many of Japan’s most celebrated generals have been masters of this art, finding that it calmed their minds and made clear their decisions for the field of action. All of the schools of _ikebana_, with one exception, are founded on the same principles. The underlying idea is to reproduce in the arrangement the effect of growing plants and to preserve for as long a time as possible the life of the plants. Arrangements aim to reflect the season or the occasion. When high winds prevail in March, branches with unusual curves are selected and so placed as to suggest strong breezes. Certain colors are considered unlucky for certain occasions, for example, red suggesting flames is inappropriate for house warmings, when white would be the desirable color in that it suggests water to quench the fire. An uneven number of flowers are considered lucky and also much more suggestive of the processes of nature, where there is seldom found perfect symmetry and actual balance. In the arrangements of the later schools there are always represented three principles known in the different groups by diverse names: “Heaven, Man and Earth;” “Earth, Air and Water;” or “Father, Mother and Child.” The three main sprays of an arrangement represent in their directions of growth these three principles, and are designated: “standing, growing, running.” Subsidiary branches in the selection are called attributes. As may be seen in Fig. 8, an arrangement is first composed in the hands, care being taken that all branches be kept close together at the base so as to form “the parent stalk”. The young man in the picture holds in his mouth a support for bracing the flowers in the bronze vase, on the floor are scissors. A woman is approaching with a waterpot. Such a refined pastime as _ikebana_ is primarily intended to entertain visitors who may contemplate the finished arrangement as it is set up in the raised portion (_tokonoma_) of the main room. Helen C. Gunsaulus Transcriber’s Notes. 1. Italicized text is indicated with leading and trailing underscores. 2. The author sometimes uses dashes within compound Japanese words (e.g. kado-matsu “doorway-pine”) to emphasize the separate words. This has been retained.