修行会

ワシントンD.C.の合気道聖武館道場における長年の花道修業を通じて生まれた作品の数々です。線や自然、比例に関する非公式な研究は、数多くの実践（D.C.道場時代には隔週で3～5点の作品制作）から得た知見に基づいています。この芸術に取り組むきっかけとして、皆様のインスピレーションとなれば幸いです。

Here are some arrangements that have been made as a result of the many years of work with flower arranging at Aikido Shobukan Dojo in Washington, DC. The informal study of lines, nature, and proportions have been gleaned from much practice (as much as 3-5 arrangements bi-weekly in the DC dojo days). May it be an inspiration for others to take up this art.

Entrance Arrangements

Sometimes small arrangements provide accents, and only require a few items. Here, dried grasses, a leftover cutting, and a small native wildflower offer joy.

彼は生け花の稽古を、合気道の稽古と同じふうに運んだ。講釈で始めない。理念を宣言しない。代わりに、部屋の空気を少しずつ変えていき、何が大切かが、こちらの身体のほうで先に分かってしまうようにする。スタジオは明るく、簡素で、切り花の青い匂いと、どこか湿った気配が漂っていた。低い机が並び、各机には、剣山が小さな、しかし油断ならないウニのように置かれ、約束事みたいにきちんと畳まれた手拭いと、道具というより器に見える浅い鉢が備えられていた。壁際には素材が待っている。節くれだった枝、拳のように固い蕾の百合、淡い花火みたいな菊、それから、いつも偶然そこにあるふうをして、決して偶然ではない“添え”の緑。

スペース＝コヨーテは、何を作るかを説明して始めなかった。畳の端を歩くときと同じように机の列を辿り、視線を配り、注意を分散させる——見るというより、聴くに近い。やがて彼は、あらかじめ用意しておいた“温い鉢”の前で止まり、両手を器の左右に添えた。まるで水温ではなく、部屋の温度を確かめているようだった。「温い」と彼は、ほとんど独り言のように言った。「熱くはない。」彼は一本の茎を持ち上げた。別の日なら埋め草扱いされそうな、地味で頑固な素材だ。その切り口を温い水に浸す手つきは、温度計をそっと下ろす人の慎重さに似ていた。

説明は短く、飾りがなかった。空気の溜まり。茎の中にできる気泡。切り口が空気に触れている時間が長かったり、切るのが遅かったり、ハサミを探している間にもたついたりすると、花は水ではなく空気を飲んでしまう。それで、悲しみのように見えるが、実際には生理現象として、ふっと折れる。彼はそれを、畳の上で「踏ん張り」が起こる話の仕方で語った。道徳ではない。予測できる結果だ。「空気を吸わせない。」その言葉は、静かな室内で妙に親密に響いた。彼は近くの冷水の桶を示した。澄んで、待っている。「温いほうが開く。冷たいほうが閉じる。」

He ran the ikebana session the way he ran keiko: not by lecturing, not by announcing a doctrine, but by changing the air in the room until everyone could feel what counted. The studio—bright, spare, and faintly damp with the smell of cut greens—had been set with low tables, each table with a kenzan like a small, menacing sea urchin, a towel folded to the size of a promise, and a shallow bowl that looked more like a serving dish than a tool. Buckets of material waited along the wall: branches with knuckled joints, lilies still tight as fists, chrysanthemums like pale fireworks, the casual greenery that always seems to have arrived by accident and never does.

Space‑Coyote didn’t begin by telling anyone what they were going to make. He walked the line of tables the way he walked the edge of the mat—eyes scanning, attention distributed—then stopped at the warm bowl he’d prepared and set his hands on either side of it as if he were checking the temperature of the room itself. “Warm,” he said, almost to himself. “Not hot.” He lifted a stem—some modest, stubborn piece of plant matter that, on another day, might have been dismissed as filler—and dipped the cut end into the warm water with the care of a person lowering a thermometer.

He explained, briefly, without romance: air pockets. Embolisms in the stem. A cut made too slowly, or a cut that sat exposed while someone searched for scissors, and the plant would drink air instead of water and collapse in a way that looked like sadness but wasn’t. He spoke about it the way he spoke about bracing on the mat: not as a moral failure, but as a predictable consequence of the wrong timing. “Don’t let them take in air,” he said, and in the quiet the sentence sounded oddly intimate, like advice about grief. He nodded toward a basin of cold water nearby—clear, waiting. “Warm opens. Cold seals.”

彼が最初に作った型は、彼の技量の“そのまま”だった。つまり、不自然なほど速い。ある種の工芸には、見ていると単なる急ぎに見える速度がある。しかし次の瞬間、その決断の清潔さに気づかされる。スペース＝コヨーテの手の速さは、その逆説を帯びていた——速いのに、どこか遅い。動きが、より大きな静けさの内側で起きているみたいだった。彼は桶に手を入れ、枝を一本掬い上げ、空中で一度だけくるりと回した。それは鍵を回す仕草のようで、同時に、枝を“読む”時間でもあった。線。弱点。切られてもなお主張したがる方向。彼は切り口を温い鉢に浸し、間髪入れずに手拭いの上へ運ぶ。

ハサミが現れた。句読点のように。茎は、ちょうどよい高さで断ち切られる。ためらいがない。初心者のように、目で測って、素材が「望み」を告げるのを待つ時間がない。切る。すぐに冷水に落とす。空気ではなく水だけを飲むように。次の瞬間には、茎は剣山に刺さっている。静かで確かな圧で押し込まれ、針はもはや凶器ではなく、支えのように見えた。枝は立つ。揺れない。言い訳しない。

The first arrangement he made was at his level, which is to say it was unreasonably fast. There’s a speed in certain crafts that looks like rushing until you notice how clean the decisions are. Space‑Coyote’s hands moved with that paradoxical quality—fast, but slow somehow, as if the motion were happening inside a larger stillness. He reached into the bucket, lifted a branch, turned it once in the air the way a person might turn a key, and you could see him reading it: the line, the weak point, the direction it wanted to insist on even after being cut. He dipped the end into the warm bowl, then—without pause, without the little theatrics that signal “now I am doing the important part”—brought it over the towel.

The scissors appeared like a punctuation mark. They intercepted the stem at just the right height—no hesitation, no measuring with the eyes the way beginners do, hoping the plant will reveal what it wants if they stare hard enough. The cut was made, and the cut end went immediately into cold water, a quick plunge to keep the stem from drinking anything but what it needed. Then, almost before the mind could register the sequence, the branch was in the kenzan, anchored with a firm, quiet press that made the pins look less like spikes and more like support. The branch stood up. It didn’t wobble. It didn’t plead.

Pink, Purple, and Maples Descending

This came out rather nicely, and again reflects the geometry of the space that is constrained on the left by a wall, and open on the right. Life would continue filling this space in this direction.

周囲の受講者たち——多くは合気道の人たちで、何人かは別の修練から迷い込んだように見えながら、ここに残っている——は、畳の上で彼が場を整えていくときに見たのと同じ顔で見ていた。トリックを探す顔だ。しかしトリックはない。あるのは注意と、タイミングと、過ぎ去った瞬間と交渉しない決意だけだ。

彼は、壁に絵を掛けるように花材を置かなかった。場の全体を扱っていた。作業中、身体の位置をわずかに変え、作品がいろいろな角度から見えるようにする。それは、生け花で教えられる「どこから見ても生きていなければならない」という規矩——正面、側面、背面、“重要でない”はずの視点が、よい作品では小さな啓示になる——を、作りながらすでに守っている仕草に見えた。葉を置くとき、境界線を引くみたいに置く。花を持ち上げるとき、部屋に“この沈黙を見ろ”と頼むみたいに持ち上げる。

不思議なのは、速さが決して雑さにならないことだった。茎と葉と花弁が、机から剣山へと、ぼやけるほどの速さで移動する。しかしその“ぼやけ”には骨格がある。枝は上がり、温水に浸され、切られ、冷水で締められ、刺される。二本目の枝はそれに応える。写さない。競わない。自然のように感じられる非対称を作る。彼は必要なだけ枝葉を落とす——茎の“背”を整え、ここで一枚、あそこで小さく——それは、冷水で切り口がきちんと再封されるようにするためだった。彼がずっと昔、師から教わったとおりに。大工が、あとで隠すために紙やすりをかけるのではなく、問題になる前にさっとささくれを取るのに似ている。彼は文字どおり、空気の溜まりを防いでいた。そしてもっと大きな意味で、迷いを防いでいた。

Around him, the students—mostly aikido people, a few who looked like they’d wandered in from a different kind of discipline and stayed—watched with the same expression I’d seen on the mat when he regulated the room into coherence. They were trying to catch the trick, and the trick was that there wasn’t one. There was just attention, and timing, and a refusal to negotiate with the moment after it had passed.

He didn’t place material as if he were building a picture on a wall. He managed the whole space. He moved his torso subtly so that the arrangement could be seen from multiple angles as he worked, as if he were already honoring the ikebana rule that the piece must be alive from every direction—front, side, back, the “unimportant” view that, in a good arrangement, becomes its own small revelation. When he set a leaf, he set it as if he were setting a boundary. When he lifted a flower, he lifted it as if he were asking the room to pay attention to a particular silence.

What made it uncanny was the way his speed never turned into mess. Stems and leaves and petals moved from table to kenzan in a blur, but the blur had structure. A branch would rise, dip, be cut, be sealed, be placed; a second branch would answer it—not mirror it, not compete with it, but create the kind of asymmetry that feels like nature rather than design. He removed just enough plant matter—backing the stem, stripping a leaf here, a small cut there—to let the plant reseal cleanly in cold water, the way his teacher had shown him long ago, the way a carpenter learns to take the splinter off a board before it becomes a problem you have to hide with sanding. He was, in a literal sense, preventing air pockets. In a larger sense, he was preventing doubt.

Aikido [Somewhere in a Distant Future]

This arrangement complemented the calligraphy well and was a centerpiece offering an effect of a fire.

God’s Brush

This arrangement came together symbolizing the re-emergence of life after a great conflagration.

作品は、派手な完成の合図ではなく、ある瞬間の“必然”として現れた。ついさっきまで、いくつもの決断だったものが、次の瞬間には「ひとつの物」になる。花束のような“完成感”ではない。バランスが、バランスを見せつけることなく成立している。線があり、量感があり、そして、呼吸するための小さな空白がある。余白は欠如ではなく、注意の形だった。

彼は一歩だけ下がった。遠くではない。作品が何をしたかを作品自身に語らせる程度に。彼は少し回し、さらに少し回し、さまざまな方向から冷静に、容赦なく見た。対称の意味で美しいのではない。どこに立っても、作品が一貫した会話を差し出すという意味で美しい。正面が罠にならない。側面が偶然にならない。背面が謝らない。

そして儀式もなく、彼は二作目へ移った。

The arrangement arrived not with a flourish but with a kind of sudden inevitability. One moment it was a collection of decisions; the next it was a thing. It didn’t look “finished” the way a bouquet looks finished. It looked balanced in the way a person looks balanced when they aren’t trying to look balanced. There was line, then mass, then a small, deliberate emptiness that made the whole piece breathe. The negative space was not absence; it was the shape of attention.

He stepped back. Not far—just enough to let the arrangement show him what he’d done. He turned it a few degrees, then another few degrees, scanning from different sides with a calm severity. It was beautiful from all angles, not in the symmetrical sense, but in the sense that wherever you stood, the piece offered you a coherent conversation. A front view that wasn’t a trap. A side view that wasn’t an accident. A back view that didn’t apologize.

And then, without ceremony, he was onto the second.

Life Emergent

This was one of the earliest arrangements and calligraphies illuminated by the holiday gift from G. & I. The branch is lovely and has a very interesting arc. The container garden’s hosta leaves protected from large slugs are very wonderful. A native wildflower shoots right up through the center.

今度はさらに速く、受講者たちは思わず少し笑った——感嘆と不公平さの間で、人が出してしまう種類の音だ。誰かが、先を「考えている」のかと尋ねた。スペース＝コヨーテは首を振った。「考えるのは遅すぎる。」言い切ってから、彼は柔らげた。残酷になるためではない。「手で考える。素材は、聴けば教えてくれる。」

頭が重くて茎が弱い花を取り、温水に浸し、切り、冷水で締め、置く。その置き方は、弱さを無効化する。角度が支え、線が支え、作品は脆さを隠さない。脆さが立てるように配置する。

This time he worked even faster, which made the students laugh a little—one of those involuntary sounds people make when they can’t decide whether something is impressive or unfair. A student asked if he was “thinking ahead,” and Space‑Coyote shook his head. “Thinking is too slow,” he said, and then softened it, because he wasn’t trying to be cruel. “You think with your hands. The plant tells you if you listen.”

He took a flower with a heavy head and a weak stem, dipped it warm, cut it clean, sealed it cold, and placed it in a way that made its weakness irrelevant. The angle carried it. The line supported it. The piece didn’t hide fragility; it arranged fragility so that it could stand.

見ているうちに、畳の上で感じたのと同じことに気づいた。彼は素材を無理にねじ伏せないし、甘やかしもしない。仕事が“生きたまま”保たれる境界を管理している。管理しすぎれば、作品は絞め殺されたようになる。管理が足りなければ、誰かが花を剣山に投げ込んだだけになる。彼は、決断が鋭いのに攻撃的ではない狭い帯域に住んでいた。圧があるのに、パニックがない帯域に。

Watching him, I noticed the same thing I’d noticed in keiko: he wasn’t forcing the material, and he wasn’t indulging it. He was regulating the boundary where the work stayed alive. Too much control and the arrangement would look strangled. Too little and it would look like someone dropped a handful of flowers on a device. He lived in that narrow band where decisions are sharp but not aggressive—where you can feel pressure, but not panic.

Mountain Wind Meets Quetzalcóatl

What had been envisioned didn’t quite meet the paper, because the top of “wind” was about the size of the roof of the house, yet no brush was available for such a large line nor did the paper accommodate. However, the arrangement was an attempt to integrate the calligraphy with the iconography of Quetzalcóatl presenting.

September 13, 2020

やがて受講者たちが作り始めた。最初は初心者の音で部屋が満ちる。ためらいがちなハサミの音。切ってから刺すまでの無駄な間。あの「これで合ってますか？」という小声——実際には救助要請の言葉。スペース＝コヨーテは急いで直さなかった。裁判官ではなく、サーモスタットのように動いた。結果ではなくリズムを調整する。誰かのそばで温い鉢を少し近づける。言葉はない。するとテンポが変わる。手拭いを一度、軽く叩く。妙に馬鹿げた動作なのに、受講者は作業を清潔にすることを思い出す。誰かのために一度だけ切る。ハサミが正しい高さで閃き、その瞬間、その人の肩から結び目がほどけたみたいに息が抜ける。

The students began to work. At first, the room filled with beginner noise: the hesitant snip of scissors, the too‑long pause between cutting and placing, the little murmurs of “is this right?” that are really requests for rescue. Space‑Coyote didn’t rush to correct. He moved through the room like a thermostat, not a judge. He adjusted the rhythm rather than the result. He’d stop behind a pair and slide the warm bowl closer, not saying a word, and suddenly the pace changed. He’d tap the towel once—an almost absurd gesture—and a student would remember to work cleanly. He’d make a single cut for someone, the scissors flashing at the right height, and the student’s whole body would exhale as if the cut had removed a knot from their shoulders.

ある瞬間、部屋が別の種類の静けさに入った。良い静けさ。人が語るのをやめ、聴き始めたときの静けさ。受講者の手は、言い訳を減らして動き始めた。温水から冷水へ、滞りなく。切り口はきれいになり、作品には“努力”ではなく“意図”が現れ始める。集団の覚醒度が、フローに近いところへ収束していくのが感じられた。張りつめているが、焦っていない。目が覚めている。

There was a moment when the room became quiet in a different way—the good kind, the kind that means people have stopped narrating and started listening. The students’ hands began to move with less apology. Stems went warm to cold without delay. Cuts became cleaner. Arrangements began to show intention rather than effort. You could feel the collective arousal settle into something like flow: alert, awake, not frantic.

Fireworks in Grass

This is an arrangement purely from the natural gardens around the cabin, and came out quite lovely!

This is one of the first calligraphies illuminated by new lighting provided as a holiday gift from G. & I.

スペース＝コヨーテはふと顔を上げ、私と目が合った。その眼差しには、畳の上で全員が言われずに同じ方向へ回転したときに見た、小さな、少しいたずらっぽい満足があった。彼は机の列——線と空間と結果がそれぞれに成立している、小さな世界が三十——へ手を振り、物理の事実を述べるように静かに言った。「これが合気だ。」

Space‑Coyote looked up and met my eye, and for a second I saw the same small, almost mischievous satisfaction I’d seen on the mat when the whole group had turned together without being told. He gestured toward the tables—thirty little worlds of line and space and consequence—and said, quietly, as if stating a fact about physics: “This is aiki.”

Grasses and Natives

After arranging flowers for a while, the summer grasses and native plants make for more pleasing arrangements and also offer partners and guests of the cabin a way to study the plant life in indoor spaces.

生け花が武術だと言いたいのではない。彼が言いたいのは、同じ技能が働いているということだった。無理を不要にするほど正確に空間を扱うこと。何も“押し通す”必要がないようにタイミングを調律すること。目に見えない空気の溜まり——ためらい、パニック、過剰な管理——を防ぐこと。魔法は、手が速いことにあるのではない。魔法は、部屋全体が、ほんのひととき「注意の速度」で動き始めることにあった。

He didn’t mean that ikebana was martial. He meant that the same skill was at work: the ability to manage space so precisely that effort becomes unnecessary, to regulate timing so that nothing has to be forced, to prevent the invisible air pockets—hesitation, panic, overcontrol—that make things collapse. The “magic” wasn’t in his hands moving fast. The magic was in the room learning to move, for a moment, at the speed of attention.