November 18, 2016 – Friends Forever

Nobu Kurashige is the Head Professor and Managing Director of the Ikenobo Ikebana Society of America, San Francisco by the request of 45th Headmaster, Sen’ei Ikenobo. Prior to this she was the Head Professor at the Ikenobo College, lecturer at the Doshisha University, and two other universities in Japan. She was in charge of radio talk show for the Yamaguchi Broadcasting Company, where she talked about “Ikebana, Travel, and Tea” for 15 years.

Kurashige-sensei grew up with Japanese traditional culture as her mother taught both tea ceremony and Japanese flower arrangement on the island of Shikoku, in the Kochi Prefecture, Japan. She received her Master’s Degree in Intercultural Studies at the Yamaguchi Prefectural University in Yamaguchi, Japan.

In 1978, Kurashige-sensei enrolled in the Ikenobo Ikebana Central Training Institute to further her studies in Ikebana where she has continued her studies for over 40 years. During this time, she received the Tachibana prize four times, the highest award presented to outstanding students.

Since 1986, at the request of the Japanese government, Kurashige-sensei has given lectures and demonstrations on ikebana to promote friendship through flowers in over 50 countries. In August 1995, she was selected to be the first woman to represent the Ikenobo School of flower arrangement as a visiting professor to the United States and Canada. She travelled across the countries with well- received demonstrations and workshops.

Recent invitational exhibitions and displays include arrangements at the Bonn National Museum in Germany, the Reitberg Museum in Zurich, Switzerland, and the Tokyo National Museum, the oldest and largest museum in Japan where she has arranged Ikebana for the past 9 years. In America, she has lectured at various colleges and Universities including Stanford University.