27 Ikebana means “bring life to flowers.” After fresh flowers are cut from the soil (the death of the flowers), they are given new life when they are arranged in a container or vessel. Ikebana is also called kado, which means “the way of mastering flower arrangement” in Japanese (Kubo, Keiko’s Ikebana: A Contemporary Approach to the Traditional Japanese Art of Flower Arranging, 1).

28 On 7 July 1937, Japanese troops engaged in a skirmish with Chinese soldiers in the vicinity of the Marco Polo Bridge just south of Beijing. Within a month, a full-scale war was underway (Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present, 204).

29 The second Sino-Japanese War occurred between 1937 and 1945.