From a Mouse a Flower

Hone = bone, bana = flower. Honebana, Hideki Tokushige calls his art: single-flower sculptures he makes from the bones of mice. Honebana might, to Western ears, sound like a sendup of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging, if it weren’t for the fact that his work is a meditation on “nature and modern life.” It might appear a bit creepy if it weren’t for its beauty. The works are at once delicate and elaborate; each mouse bone carefully placed to complete the illusion of the stem, the petal and the stamen.

His use of bones emerges, Tokushige writes, from the knowledge that humans have been, since the beginning of time, connected to animal bones—converting them into tools and even houses (thanks to the size of the mastodon), not to mention musical instruments, jewelry and fancy footwear—and that all that we avail ourselves of today, from a sweater to the internet, stems from this “primordial consciousness.”[1]

For the Japanese artist, the mouse is the perfect conduit for conveying these ideas because, like us, it is a mammal and similar in form, that has lived through epochs of human history. And perhaps he chose the mouse too, because it was easy to find. He went to a pet supply company that raises domesticated mice whose sole purpose in life has been ascribed by man, to be raised only to be killed and frozen to feed people’s snakes. The chain of life with a man-made spin.

After he extracts the bones, transforming them into a lycoris, a lotus blossom, or an azalea for example, his work is only partially done. With a 4 x 5 format camera in a room on the first floor of his old two-story home, he painstakingly photographs the honebana to give it permanence. No sooner than he’s done, he turns around, breaks apart the flower and buries the bones to honor nature’s “systematic cycle,” and to honor the mouse.

“Spring comes after winter, flower blossoms and dies, evening follows morning, life returns to soil and [is] reborn—.”

 

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[1] All quotes, according to Hideki Tokushige’s website.

[Image: Lycoris #2, 2009, copyright Hideki Tokushige]