I have always wanted to arrange not just straight chrysanthemums, but also those with a bit of a quirk. If you wish for it, it seems to come true – a friend of mine shared chrysanthemum buds with me.
The second year after I planted them in the soil, I was surprised to find they had grown before I knew it, using other plants as cushions, despite their thin stalks. I put the shears in while paying great respect to these flowers, which are responding to their natural habitat before they are buried under the snow.

When I was considering the partners for the arrangement, I came across someone who allows me to cut their mube (Japanese staunton vine). I thought that although chrysanthemum and mube live in different places, it doesn’t mean that they can’t go well together. Hence this arrangement emerged. I learnt from a book (Makino’s illustrated flora of Japan) that the mube fruit, which I had not seen or arranged for a long time, is “white and sweet and was offered to the imperial court in a straw basket in ancient times”. A friend of mine who used to live in Shiga Prefecture told me that Shiga Prefecture is working on cultivating mube fruits as a gift to the imperial family.

Materials used in the flower arrangement
Mube (Japanese staunton vine), saga chrysanthemum, small chrysanthemum, and great burnet (sanguisorba officinalis)

Soruce of materials
Garden in Ishibiki, garden at Hotori, and others

Base
Old costume baskets made in Laos

Exhibition site
#204 LOCOLOCO higashi, Higashiyama, Kanazawa City