Ikebana with 1000 flowers

2023.6.20 17:05

I created a huge Ikebana art “HAKOBANA” in Hakodate, Hokkaido!

1000 guest arranged 1000 flowers!
Driftwood that washed ashore in Hakodate, Hakodate maple, wooden pallets that have continued to see the sea of Hakodate at the Kanemori Brick Warehouse
Alstroemeria flowers in Nanae
All of them are made in Hakodate.
It is a large flower arrangement that could only be produced here!

As an event commemorating the 35th anniversary of the opening of Kanemori Red Brick Warehouse, it was a public Ikebana event for three days from Friday, June 16th to Sunday, June 18th.

I’ll do a little report.

Two weeks before the event, I visited Hakodate to prepare. First, we visited two flower farmers in Nanae Town. With the full cooperation of JA, I was guided. The Picture is the alstroemeria house. The Melia that you see at the flower market (farmers call it Melia, so I imitated it, so hereafter, Melia!) is almost cut to 80 cm for convenience of transportation, so I saw this big Melia. It was my first time. And there are about 50 types of Melia. It surprised me too.

Nanae Town, located next to Hakodate, is the second largest town in Japan for the number of Melia shipments. For carnations, it is the number one flower town in Japan. I want to use local flowers!

I decided I would use 1000 Melia. I want local people to think that the Melia flowers that are familiar to them are so wonderful, and I want people who come from other places to know Nanae-cho, which produces such splendid and beautiful Melia.

In addition to flowers, we decided to use wooden pallets used for warehouse transportation, but there is one more important thing. Driftwood.

On the Omori coast, we picked up driftwood and carried them out. I could find splendid driftwoods,  but how heavy they are!

In addition, sand got into the driftwood, so I cleaned it up and painted it white to make the shape stand out.

With the cooperation of a large landscape gardener in Hakodate, Kikyo Zoen, they brought a fine maple tree that had withered in a mountain field to the warehouse. I also use this as a base. Color it white and finish the preparations so far.

The actual event consists of two parts, and on the first day, we showed you how to create the base of “HAKOBANA” with driftwood and pallets.

First, start here. The wooden pallets were heavier and heavier than I expected.  The color of the aging deterioration of the palette is very lovely and wonderful.

I’m going to fasten all the materials with an impact driver while watching the balance. Normally, this part would not be made public, but I decided to make it public because I thought it would be interesting because no one had ever seen this kind of thing before.

The tools I use are almost electric impact drivers and electric saws. The sound of the impact reverberates throughout the venue, so on the contrary, people gathered and asked, “What is it?”, and it became a good sound effect. As for the impact, I don’t know how many hits I’ve hit!  I’m sure I hit more than 100! It’s almost carpentry work.
Since everyone is watching, I would like to use tools with a smile, but it seems that it is difficult for humans to laugh when they put in effort, so I did it with a grim face. It’s physical work, so I’m already drenched in sweat when I’m done.

Finally, the finished composition is painted with a little color, and the first day is over.

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the width is about 7 meters.
It was like a mysterious forest that appeared in a red brick warehouse.

On the second day, we had 1,000 Melias arranged by the first 1,000 people!

At first, I thought I would arrange it myself, but I wanted as many people as possible to know the joy of arranging flowers, so I decided to ask everyone to arrange it!  It’s my first attempt to ask people arrange flowers!  Many small children also participated, and they honestly said, “It was fun!”, which warmed my heart! Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of when guests arranged flowers. I was too busy and had no chance to touch my iPhone.

The flowers have a plastic water-retaining bag under the stem to keep them from withering during the event.

Here is the result. It looks beautiful not only from the front, but also from both the left and right. Also, the scenery seen from the left and the scenery seen from the right have different expressions, so it is also a point that you will want to go around the work.

No, not here! There!  Guests were trying to take a good photo with the Ikebana work. It was like we had a big photo contest aiming for Instagram. Not only young people, but also people in their 70s and older, a lot! I was really happy when I saw it.

At the same Kanemori brick warehouse, another warehouse, my Ikebana exhibition with photos  was held at the same time.

Taking over all of the advertising on the trams in Hakodate

I appeared on Hakodate’s radio  “FM Iruka” to advertise this event. Here’s a little video of the live broadcast. I was happy to hear that there were so many guests who said, “I heard the radio and came here!”

I have a lot of photos and videos, but I can’t put them all  on my blog. If you have time, I would be happy if you could take a look at Facebook or Instagram.

Finally, I will upload a video of the completed work from Instagram and end it. Thank you for reading to the end。

 

 

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