chabana

thumb|Chabana arrangement of the Sōgetsu-ryū school is a generic term for the arrangement of flowers put together for display at a Japanese tea ceremony, and also for the wide variety of plants conventionally considered as appropriate material for such use, as witnessed by the existence of such encyclopedic publications as the Genshoku Chabana Daijiten [All-color encyclopedia of chabana]. The method of arranging the flowers is according to the nageire, or thrown in, style of flower arranging. In turn, nageire is recognized as a certain stylistic category of Kadō, the Japanese "Way of Flowers". These all developed from ikebana, which had its origin in early Buddhist flower offerings (kuge). Chabana, however, refers specifically to the flower display in the room or space for chadō, and though it fundamentally is a form of ikebana, it comprises a genre unto its own.

==History== The history of follows hand-in-hand with the history of , and within that historical milieu, emerged in tandem with the rise of around the Momoyama period. Sen no Rikyū is considered the most influential person in the development of wabi-cha, and is also credited as the originator of the accompanying mode of flower arrangement, which is characterized by freedom and spontaneity in expressing the natural beauty of the material. Among the statements attributed to him, the first one in the set of seven known as "Rikyū's Seven Precepts" (Rikyū shichisoku) concerns chabana. It goes, "The flowers [Chabana] should be such as they are in the moor." In the history of ikebana, the style was added to the more stylized rikka arrangement around the end of the 1600s, as influenced by chabana. The term "" was first used in 1765 during the Meiwa period. It is believed to first appeared in The Tale of Genji.