enthroned prince, and the guests or disciples on entering the
room will salute it with a profound bow before making their
addresses to the host. Drawings from masterpieces are made
and published for the edification of amateurs. The amount of
literature on the subject is quite voluminous. When the flower
fades, the master tenderly consigns it to the river or carefully
buries it in the ground. Monuments are sometimes erected
to their memory.

The birth of the Art of Flower Arrangement seems to be
simultaneous with that of Teaism in the fifteenth century.
Our legends ascribe the first flower arrangement to those
early Buddhist saints who gathered the flowers strewn by
the storm and, in their infinite solicitude for all living things,
placed them in vessels of water. It is said that Soami, the
great painter and connoisseur of the court of Ashikaga-
Yoshimasa, was one of the earliest adepts at it. Juko, the
tea-master, was one of his pupils, as was also Senno, the
founder of the house of Ikenobo, a family as illustrious in
the annals of flowers as was that of the Kanos in painting.
With the perfecting of the tea-ritual under Rikiu, in the latter
part of the sixteenth century, flower arrangement also attains
its full growth. Rikiu and his successors, the celebrated Oda-
wuraka, Furuka-Oribe, Koyetsu, Kobori-Enshiu, Katagiri-
Sekishiu, vied with each other in forming new combinations.
We must remember, however, that the flower-worship of the
tea-masters formed only a part of their aesthetic ritual, and
was not a distinct religion by itself. A flower arrangement,
like the other works of art in the tea-room, was subordinated
to the total scheme of decoration. Thus Sekishiu ordained