Interior with Flower Arrangement, from The Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement

The Flowers of Japan and the Art of Floral Arrangement (1891) is the celebrated ikebana treatise by the British architect Josiah Conder (1852-1920), published in Tokyo by Hakubunsha and accompanied by fourteen color woodblock plates designed by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi (ten plates of seasonal flower studies) and Kawanabe Kyōsui (four plates of interior room views showing model flower arrangements in domestic settings). Conder, who had come to Japan in 1877 as the foreign professor of architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering, had been Kawanabe Kyōsai's pupil from 1881 onward, and the inclusion of Kyōsai's daughter Kyōsui (then twenty-three) and Yoshitoshi (in his final year of life) gave the book an authoritative pedigree in late Meiji nihonga and ukiyo-e circles. Conder's text covered the history and philosophy of ikebana, the Enshū-school and Ikenobō-school approaches, the principles of seasonal flower selection, container choice, and the integration of arranged flowers with calligraphic scrolls and architectural setting in the formal Japanese reception room. Kyōsui's interior-view plates illustrated the resulting effect — what an ideal Meiji room with carefully presented flowers might look like — and complemented Yoshitoshi's flower studies by providing the architectural and decorative context. The British Museum holds a copy of the book (1988,0624,0.1), and other complete copies survive at the British Library, the Sainsbury Institute, Harvard, and major Japanese-studies libraries.