The day I walked in a bamboo grove for the first time was the time I came to know that each bamboo is able to speak. Bamboo holding rainwater in its cut, standing dry bamboo, sick bamboo, laughing bamboo, bamboo entangled at its top… Through trying to read the surface of bamboo by looking at and listening carefully to the bamboo’s skin colour, length, thickness, joints, how it came out from the ground, and its direction of growth, I experienced a moment where my fear dissolved and my empathy emerged.
When the water surface in the rice field starts softly waving and shining by a touch of the breath of May, it is time for bamboo to come out. The grove gets busy with baby bamboo shoots. Bamboo, also, as soon as we take our eyes off from it, very quickly grows to a green bamboo log. If I had a special pair of glasses to be able to look under the ground, I would love to see what is happening to their roots.

Materials used in the flower arrangement
Bamboo shoot, Shaga (Iris japonica), Sange paper*, glass sheet, glass tube

*a piece of paper in a shape of lotus petal which is scattered in a Buddhist mass to pray for departed souls