Nagashima Shiro (永島四郎)
Shiro NAGASHIMA (the year of birth unknown - 1963) was a flower designer from Nagano City (Matsushiro), Nagano Prefecture.
A flower arrangement expert
He was the earliest pioneers in the history of Japanese flower designing (flowering plants decoration). He worked in Mitsui Noen Farm (Togoshi Farm), present Dai-ichi Engei, that Mitsui-zaibatsu built with flowers and plants collected from all over the world during the Meiji, Taisho era and during and after the Worlld War II in the early Showa era. He was ordered to westernize the traditional ikebana (flower arrangement) as an urgent tusk in order to decorate Mitsui family's geihinkan (guest house) with flowers, the second house built for the purpose of the facility to entertain foreigners. In 1922, he was ordered to learn flower designing in the United States as the first Japanese. His style after returning to Japan changed to a unique one that had the sense of 'wabi (austere beauty) and sabi (elegant simplicity)' that Japanese have, combined with what he had learned in the United States. He came to play a role in westernizing Japanese culture. He opened a flower shop named 'Fujinkoron hana no mise' (a flower shop of Fujinkoron) in Ginza, Tokyo in 1936 (closed in 1944 because of the war).
He left a famous saying 'Flowering plants decoration needs to be backed up by wealth.'
Akira YAMAMOTO (a scholar of floral decoration) is one of his disciples.
His main books are 'Hana no dezain (flower designing)' and 'Atarashii Nihon no Kakisoshoku (the new flowering plants design of Japan)' and others.
He died in 1963.