"The tokonoma was the most distinctive feature of the shoin tea ceremony room, since it lent itself to the display of such things as paintings, flower arrangements, porcelain, and ceramicware. The shape of the average tokonoma was especially suitable for vertical hanging scrolls decorated either with pictorial scenes or with samples of calligraphy."

"The arranging of cut flowers for exhibition in the tokonoma, moreover, was developed during the medieval age into an art that came to take its place alongside the tea ceremony as one of the most basic of the polite accomplishments of the Japanese." (4)

⁴ H. Paul Varley, Japanese Culture: A Short History (New York: Praegar Publishers, 1973), pages 89 - 90.