To Mayuka Yamazaki, a high-level business executive, ikebana — the ancient Japanese art of floral creations — is not just about arranging flowers. It is about attuning to the wisdom and beauty of nature and enriching our experience of being human. As a master of the art, she explains that ikebana is a word derived from the verb ikeru (to bring alive) and hana (flowers), or combined, “letting flowers live.” For over 20 years, Mayuka has been letting flowers live, and most recently, she has brought this practice to help restore wholeness to schools, international organizations, communities, and most notably, corporations.

As a young child in Japan, Mayuka was drawn to “finding beauty in the small changes in nature and its seasons.” When she was 18, she began to learn ikebana as a hobby under Risen Kajikawa, a headmaster of ko-ryu shoreikai, one of the ikebana factions in Japan. After studying economics at Tokyo University and then working as a management consultant, her education took her to the United States, where she would graduate with honors at Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service. On the outside, her life trajectory seemed clear. On the inside, however, Mayuka felt lost. 

Some years later, she found herself working at Harvard Business School (HBS) at a fortuitous time. HBS was trying to transform its education system and its new guiding principle was “Knowing, Doing, Being,” emphasizing the need to rebalance the head, hands, and heart. Mayuka realized that the heart, which ought to be her true inner compass, had been largely silenced by her focus on acquiring knowledge and skills. So she set about trying many things, from meditation practices to exploration circles with colleagues. What opened her heart the most was creating things — concrete things — like poems, stories, and paintings. This moved her from consumer to creator, from thinking to being. And one day, she had an epiphany that ikebana — which had begun as a beloved hobby but had over two decades become an art she would master — could be her career.

Ikebana is an art of great subtlety and sophistication. Simple floral arrangements in Japan date back as early as the 7th century, beginning as simple Buddhist temple offerings that symbolized paradise. Today, it is a popular and innovative “living art” that continues to engage the ikebana artist in deep conversation with nature and her energies, equally incorporating the forms and empty space.

In 2017, Mayuka launched an initiative called IKERU, with a vision of bringing the wisdom of ikebana into business and leadership development. Through IKERU, she offers individual and group sessions, inviting people to create harmony in themselves or their teams through practice of the art form. They also learn the challenge and beauty of creating something when they have no answers or directions.

- Awakin Call Editors

Master and apprentice. That is how Jedi in Star Wars were trained for centuries. The master would teach the apprentice everything he or she knew about what was to be a Jedi including not only skills and techniques but minds and attitudes. It took years and years. When the master thought the apprentice was ready to be a Jedi master, he or she submitted the recommendation to the Jedi council and the council decided to approve the apprentice as a Jedi master, or not.

The Japanese traditional arts including ikebana have adopted this apprenticeship model. Once you enter the world of ikebana, you are trained under one certain master for at least several years and if the master thinks you are ready to be a master, which is called "shihan" in Japanese, the master recommends you to the board of masters which would approve you as shihan. If approved, you are allowed to teach others as your apprentices.

To be perfectly honest, this model was quite frustrating to me for a long time, who started ikebana at the age of nineteen. Having spent years of studying and competing to go to good schools since I was nine, I was the poster child of the Japanese education system that would measure and rank students' ability by test scores. I got accustomed that I knew where I was compared to others and how much further I should work to get to a school I wanted to go.

In ikebana, all I got was my master's feedback to my specific work, such as "Isn't it better if this flower would look at this direction?", "There may be a bit of unbalance here" and "These flowers may need more room to breathe". Her feedback was always on how I could improve the work I had just created, not on how good I was and how I could be a better ikebana practitioner like her. I wanted to know where I was and how much I should train myself to be better but my master did not tell me. Yes, it was indeed frustrating.

Another frustration was about the opacity of measuring what would be "good" ikebana. I started to exhibit my ikebana work at the large exhibition and saw the works done by others who were much more experienced than me and were already above the shihan level. But it did not mean that I was impressed with all the exhibited works by these shihan masters. As young and arrogant as I was, I was secretly thinking, "My work is better than these," and felt bitterness that I could not become shihan sooner.

French flower arrangement, for example, is the opposite of this model. In France, flower arrangement is a national license and you get the license by passing the examination. There are textbooks and you know exactly what you should study and practice, and if you pass the examination, you are certified whether you studied for a year or 10 years. If your ability is proved higher than a certain standard, you are the government-certified flower arranger, period. Fair, clear and straight-forward.

After 20 years of doing ikebana, now I think I better understand the value of this apprenticeship model. After all, ikebana is not about arranging flowers beautifully or in certain ways. It is about how to let flowers live. By letting flowers live, you need some skills but you need to have a state of mind that always stays calm and clear. Your body needs to react to the voice of flowers without even thinking. It takes years for anyone to be able to have such a state of mind and body. It just does. It also takes years for you to become truly humble - the more you learn about ikebana, the more humble you become, feeling awe to the wisdom of ikebana. And this humbleness is crucial when you do ikebana.

Also, what my master wanted to tell me, by not telling me how good I was, was to keep focusing on the moment, not on what is ahead. If I start thinking about how good I am compared to others or how much I should go, I cannot live in the moment. In order to really let flowers live, I need to live and be in the moment - otherwise, I cannot listen to the voice of flowers.

When letting someone learn things like ikebana, the apprenticeship model works, though it may take long time for the person to appreciate it (like me).

Having said that I also believe that the current ikebana apprenticeship model has a deep problem. For the past few decades, the ikebana industry has added a twist in this model, making it not only as a way of teaching but as a business model. The pyramid scheme is now attached to the model: the more apprentices you have, the more money you get when they become masters. And if your apprentice-turned-masters start teaching others, some parts of the money they get also become yours. The top of this pyramid is always the headmaster of the faction/school, who is supposed to be from a certain family, meaning that you can never be on the top of the pyramid.

It is a good business model and it might have worked in certain times, I admit, but I believe this twisted system has rather plagued the industry. There are several levels arranged before and after the master/shihan level and you are required to pay not a small amount of money every time you go up the ladder of the never-ending levels. I got so exhausted by the unspoken pressure to keep getting higher levels that I once escaped. Quite a few of my fellow lesson-mates also could not continue even if they said they enjoyed ikebana itself.

I also believe that, while I do acknowledge the value of the apprenticeship model as a way of teaching, it may not be my way. For me, those who come to my lessons and workshops are not "apprentices" to whom I transfer what I know. I have learned so much from them and they are "friends" who explore the wisdom of ikebana together.

And this is why I started IKERU - to let people simply enjoy ikebana itself outside the system, as well as why I have managed the IKERU community as openly and flatly as possible.

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For more inspiration, join an Awakin Call with Mayuka Yamazaki this weekend. More details and RSVP info here.