Modern artists are eschewing ancient rules of the Eastern floral craft, creating soulful stories one stem at a time. To label it flower arranging would be like calling sculpture a bit of stone chipping. Ikebana—“living flowers,” roughly translated—honors the innate sublimity of plants while mastering their very shapes in precise placement. With origins in sixth-century Japan, this esteemed cultural tradition has spawned myriad, rigorous schools of philosophy and technique.Enter a new generation