Ikenobo

• Japanese: 池坊 (ikenobou)

Ikenobô is the largest and oldest school of ikebana still in operation today. It traces its origins to Ikenobô Senkô in the Azuchi-Momoyama period. As early as 1817, the school is said to have had as many as 20,000 students across the realm; in that year, over 1200 students exhibited at an event in celebration of the retirement of the school's iemoto (grandmaster).

The school (and its founder) may take its name from the "monks' quarters by the pond" (ike no bô) at Rokkakudô, a temple in Kyoto that claims to be the site of the origin of the art of ikebana itself, and which remains a major center of Ikenobô activity today.

References

• Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility, Cambridge University Press (2005), 165-166.