でんでんガァデン

Tracing the tradition of single flowers posed in vases to maximalist flower stands for 2D characters is probably easier when your culture already elevates the flower as a heritage. It’s so easy, apparently, that no one seeped in either has really bothered to document how the minimalism of ikebana (生け花) evolved into flower stands now being gifted for new businesses, concerts, retirements, product launches, and promotions, before we even reach the otaku. The oldest known flower shop in Japan dates back a little over 240 years ago. For what is supposed to be an ancient art form, that would be fairly young for a thorough trace.

Ikebana has always been, chiefly, an exercise of simple elegance. As a serious practice, it is a collection of unfathomably specific rules about structure and balance, all in service of a sparse and deliberate construction. While minimalism rarely survives modern cultures now, it’s also rarely the preference of rulers that want to flaunt wealth, which Japanese flower arrangement was never going to be immune from. Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s overseeing the construction of Osaka Castle, a fortress with a gold trim designed entirely to surpass Nobunaga, is only a narrow slice of that ambition. His planting of cherry blossom trees at the Daigo-ji temple in Kyoto is a similar extravagance in presentation. The reserved dignity of ikebana would not survive Hideyoshi either, where size mattered most as he commissioned four-story tall flower arrangements with a lavish excess. Flower arrangement, for most of Japan’s history, was not imbued with a high-minded meaning or structure that would qualify it as much of a developed art form, before it was allowed to be the subject of a comedy drama. Hideyoshi’s practice, one of the generals most principally associated with the tradition now, instead elevated it as art with a most useful function: signaling the ostentatious.

Most English overviews one can locate about ikebana, winding the competing schools of it that traveled through different shogunates, prefer to emphasize the dignity and high art. The one that I have found most compelling in trying to discover any connective issue to the modern practice of flower stands instead prefers to characterize it as a light accomplishment, just as playing the harpsichord was for the English. Particularly as the otaku undergoes a change in perception where signaling status becomes in many ways more valuable than amassing trivia, this qualification felt like accidentally tripping over ground truth while wandering lost in a dense forest of history. When the Teshigahara school took the ikebana out of the tokonama, a discipline taken up by housewives during the Edo period, it would still be a stretch to qualify it by this point as a hobby interest. It certainly succeeds, however, in orienting it as bombastic in ways that I recognize from now looking at the array of otaku flower shops that have launched in the last decade and a half, including novel species, brilliant forms, and new materials like inorganics. Ikebana, mostly here, began to appear in public spaces like exhibition halls in department stores and lobbies of hotels. As grand openings became more elaborate, flower displays scaled to match as they became even more ornate.

There is still tremendously little documented specifically about the introduction or progression of flower stands as an otaku activity, which is curious for the otherwise documented minutiae that dominates breathless fandoms. Particularly as they have been so present across Japanese culture, it may seem unnecessary to frame them as any sort of uniquely otaku convention. Knowing better, the excess of the bubble economy is how I have usually understood to center Japan’s modern entertainment industry, and this golden age for idols is generally cited as the beginning of flower stands being gifted by fans for concerts. Assumed truths like this do make me uneasy, but strong evidence does support the bubble era establishing a lot of modern tradition in this space. Moth orchids became the preferred flower for business gifts during this period, considered to symbolize good fortune, and it’s recognizably common to see more modest displays using them gifted by corporate partners mingling among the more ostentatious fan stands.

Few rules and conventions from the flower stand’s growth out of ikebana, if any, seem to survive in the modern practice of businesses playing flower-gifting tag, which is inconvenient if you are trying to elevate their art as anything other than a holdover from wasteful bubble excess. For as much lip service has been paid to integrating the consumerism of acrylic stands and locally grown produce into regional revitalization, it would be useful if one company, any company, had some grandiose mission statement on the magic of flower stand gift tradition that could be retold by otaku to back the custom, or parsed by foreigners trying to understand what a flower stand even really is. Instead, it is mostly surprising how bereft overseas fan accounts are of any mention that a company like Flosta, contracted by Cygames and Sega to provide flower stands for concerts that intersected one weekend, fumbled so spectacularly with damaged stands, super-duper bankruptcy, and failed refunds that it has brought tremendous viral attention on flower stands in Japan. As much as I would qualify flower stands as an east Asia fascination, I also wouldn’t say a disposable vanity and presentation is any more baroque to westerners than kabuki, especially when it can be anchored to virtual idols and horse girls. Outrage remains the reserve currency of all otaku the world over, even when it is well outside our spheres of influence, so the silence from overseas is more bizarre to me than it is deafening.

When did flower stands, then, grow as an otaku concern that makes them now able to support a company as over-promising and under-delivering as Flosta? The process for gifting flower stands in the bubble era for concerts was largely informal, often beginning by asking management directly for approval, and the growing popularity of character idol concerts is likely to be where it was solidified as otaku ritual. The closest primary source I found linked to its current expression is a signup spreadsheet for IDOLM@STER’s 5th Anniversary concert in 2010, showing HarukaP putting up a fixed contribution of 1000 JPY each to fund a flower stand. Crowdsourcing funds in this way remains the popular convention today with the expectation that contributors will be credited on a placard, although some fans do prefer to develop stands alone.

Some flower shops that have had a long online presence do preserve some evidence of otaku participation at smaller IDOLM@STER events in the years prior to this concert, confirmed by at least one veteran fan I know that was around for the era. IDOLM@STER did not formalize accepting flower stands until NEW YEAR P@RTY the following year, where after reports of that concert were the first time flower stands appear to have earned serious focus. The start of IDOLM@STER’s Second Vision here is a fairly convenient delineation, seen with even more clarity as Azumi Asakura, replacing the voice for Yukiho during this transition, celebrated the novelty of receiving a flower stand at this concert. Speaking to how green the ritual was, applications were accepted for them not as フラワースタンド (flower stands), or フラスタ (the otaku’s now preferred shortening), or even スタンド花 (stand flowers, the normie’s preference), but more specifically ロビー花 (lobby flowers), a carve out that has definitely fallen out of fashion.

If we were to chart an inflection for flower stands, IDOLM@STER’s 7th Anniversary might be a good one for increased participation in general. Some of the earliest Twipla event IDs, where fans mostly begin with organizing flower stands even today, apply to flower stands starting with NEW YEAR P@RTY stretching into this event. On the heels of a post-anime boom period, IDOLM@STER was also undergoing a sea change in participant regulations. Penlights using AA or AAA batteries were no longer allowed at these concerts due to an incident that caused equipment damage, leading to the popularity of LR44 battery powered penlights and the development of character penlights as merch. Coupled with this bombshell announcement, and certainly less mentioned despite a similar surviving longevity, flower stands (no longer lobby flowers) were now pinned to a 40cm base and 140cm of height. Some fan wisdom I recall suggests this became explicit policy due to bounds being overstepped when overeager fans began to furnish extremes, like huge wreaths. As regulations became studied documents for concertgoers looking for any in to flout the rules, a now formal warning specifying that the number of stands might potentially exceed what could reasonably be accepted does suggest that flower stands were going through a new swell in interest.

M@STERS OF IDOL WORLD (MOIW) would be where we really begin to see that interest show in its modern concentration. With each of IDOLM@STER’s branches converging for the first time at one concert, the grandeur of this event’s format continues to propel it forward as a significant opportunity to push your tantou (or oshi if you’re now hip with it). Across the two days of the event in 2015, approximately 300 stands were counted exhibited outside of the Seibu Dome. One fan, hyping IDOLM@STER as the start of otaku giving gifts at events, wants to claim 10% of flowers in the country were consumed over these two days. Somewhat more impressively to me, Omo, as he recounts his personal exposure to flower stands at MOIW, says that 2ch by this point was still an operating organizational glue for them, although I had trouble digging up specific references. Flower shops were very much keeping up with demand by this point, leading fans and retrospectives from florists to jokingly refer to this exhibit as the 花屋天下一武道会 (Flower Shop World’s Martial Arts Tournament), riffing on Dragon Ball’s tour of force.

The label would be pushed most visibly by an otaku-focused flower shop, a relatively new invention, that had launched in 2013. Although more recent MOIW events have chosen to discover a new format of lottery participation with nobori flags, more logistically agreeable and equally well received by fans selecting into ad hoc groups, flower stands became embedded as part of the core Producer identity by displays simply of impressive scale than even individual stands being uniquely expressive. Theater Days later in 2017 would also make gifting flower stands the core interaction among players added as friends, with Starlight Stage grafting a similar interaction on a cooperative mode that was made permanent in 2018.

Realistically, the process of otaku organizing flower stands has only recently matured as they have become more individualized expressions, instead of being furnished as a general support. Organizing and delivering a stand is still uncertain and tepid enough that it is not unusual to discover organizers writing postmortems for Note blogs, or to find curious fans inquiring about how to proceed on Yahoo Answers. Rather than simple displays of bouquets, otaku have invented the flower stand as a crowdfunded accomplishment by contracting independent flower shops to realize designs that embellish a character or performer. When money does intersect doujin in this way, there is usually a conduit, like print shops and digital shopfronts, that allow the interest to scale. The advantage flower shops may have most over doujinshi, however, is that their testimonials are more publicly palatable, which allows featuring completions as case studies or in galleries on websites.

While in the past it may have taken an inventive otaku with ambition to boldly ask for Arisu’s strawberry pasta, accelerated exposure through social media and legitimization like this from independent businesses have grown the otaku flower stand into an industry, realized most by these specialized shops. One of the largest shops, citing fanaticism around Cinderella Girls, prominently seized on otaku during a post-quake downturn in business to trademark 痛花 (itahana) and make this business their focus. The characterization certainly seems applicable to the ways we have seen itasha now being stretched by custom car culture. One stand in 2017 attempted to skirt the rules by using a tablet in its display, leading to a revision of the boilerplate rules for flower stands starting with PRODUCER MEETING 2018. Later follow-ups, like an AR solution using a QR code, feel as if they are ribbing someone to make a further amend of the rules.

Most of subculture, it should be said, remains a loose collection of conventions rather than strict rules preventing these teases of the boundary. Flower stands began as such, and all related doujin concerns, if they are to continue existing with any sort of purity, will always lack a full qualification or understanding for what is completely acceptable. The abbreviation and awareness of flower stands, even among the otaku, likely has as much to do with Ensemble Stars fans upsetting what was still a reasonably loose etiquette in 2018.

Overseas otaku, as they do become more attuned to Japanese expressions, will desire to achieve the flower stand as a measure of fan legitimacy. Fans that have already sampled from this world, where a light creative achievement is still a signal stronger than accumulating merchandise, are also the reason why more overseas conventions are continuing to attempt replicating Comiket and WonFes as an export of the doujin fair model. Anime Central more recently has been able to support flower stands in its exhibit hall, mostly on prodding from fans that have strong familiarity with the process already, and Otakon secured a corner for them as well this year. Houkago P Time, one of the older assemblies of overseas Producers, effectively banded to legitimize the overseas interest in the franchise and was able to achieve a number of overseas-sponsored flower stands to Japanese concerts in its heyday.

Attempts at achieving flower stands overseas have otherwise been minimal, if not sober to the realities limiting them. Not only do volunteers at anime conventions and contracted staff for concert venues lack familiarity with flower stands, but the infrastructure, labor, and business to support them effectively do not exist in an analogue overseas, nor does anyone want to dedicate floor space to something that is, realistically, an insurance liability and fire hazard. When fan activities can be atomized and exercised organically by overseas fans without significant hurdles like this, as they can be for call guides, sponsored cheer billboards, or itasha, the purity of the expression does not feel compromised and can ramp organically. Flower stands, probably, will always have trouble achieving a similar penetration that they enjoy in Japan unless fans accept compromise on their inherent maximalism, at least initially. Japan, for what it is worth, did learn to make concessions when scaling their participation with flower stands: many of the examples you will see today now use entirely artificial flowers.

Bushiroad, despite aiming to achieve 50 percent of net sales in overseas markets, has hedged on the potential for concerts overseas. Animenomics, in their analysis, expressed this as showing the limits of holding anime concerts abroad. For overseas fans that can recall Anisong World Matsuri in Los Angeles, or Lantis Festival in Las Vegas, or Bushiroad’s own CharaExpo USA in Anaheim, it doesn’t take the head of Bushiroad Music saying it to know live events are a tough nut to crack. The cloud of fan behaviors surrounding the performances themselves are, also, more of an intangible that do as much to complete what makes the experience of a live (ライブ) more special than any concert is when realized with the same performers abroad. While it isn’t to be suggested that the intangibles like flower stands override the core experience, one does wonder if the camraderie that collects to realize a live are what western fans may be missing to unlock a deeper appreciation for them, or an experience that makes them worth traveling cross-country for. When Bushiroad and Lantis already prohibit peacock penlight holders and shouting during intermissions¹, tempering the wild spirit of the otaku, flower stands and similar completions being absent from the experience does already risk, in my mind, chipping at that core.

For otaku that have relished in the maximalism, the boundaries being drawn so tightly around their behaviors can feel constricting when they are enforced most viciously by fans policing other fans with online haranguing. Even traditions that are inherent to the spirit of Japanese concerts have teetered on a similar uncertainty in their enforcement, with COVID at one point pushing them to the edge when it ushered in a dark age of prohibiting calls and chants altogether. The convergence of the otaku on the flower stand in this period, to me, does not feel accidental. Flower stands, a venue where gilding the lily to impress other otaku remains encouraged besides simply acceptable, may be where the otaku still consider themselves able to shout freely at their loudest, without inducing the ire of fellow fans. Struggles may still lie ahead anyway, if even flower stands have now been locked out of certain events due to disputes among fans.

Seichi junrei and itasha have been similarly initiated by fans, but are catalyzed by mature business rather than being wholly dependent on it to exist at all. Whether American brutes can learn to care about flower stands in a similar context is likely, still, an open question. If they are to, they will probably first need to sprout an understanding that you can’t mirror a model of engagement by throwing more money at it to make it bloom faster.

以前オタクと飲んだときに声優現場は奇声を上げたり全身をサイリウムで発光させたりすることができなくなった結果オタクの自己表現方法がフラスタに収斂したという話を聞いてその時はそれはどうなんよと思ったけど全般的には平和な方向への歴史の歩みだなと後では思った

— えるあ (eruatashi) Jan 14, 2024