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12 January, 2003

GOING FOR THE FOLD

Although I was born in Japan, in many ways I'm not very Japanese. For instance, until a few weeks ago, I had never made an origami crane, or tsuru.

As a child in Tokyo, I must have been taught how to do origami, the Japanese art of folding colorful squares of paper into a variety of shapes from blow-up balls to flowers and dragons. But I sure don't have any memories of making anything, and for the life of me, I can't remember what to do with origami paper.

Until recently, I hadn't given it any thought. It's just as well, because I'm not exactly a craftsman as an artist. I like to make a mess when I do anything, and I've never been big on taking a lot of care to do things with precision. Even when I use a ruler to cut paper, I end up with wavy lines and uneven edges. Anyone who's received a gift from me that I wrapped knows this is true.

Chalk it up to an artsy, individualistic temperament.

Like everything else in Asia, origami, literally "folded paper," probably has it origins in China, although the written record of the form places it as a Japanese invention. Paper, at any rate, was invented in China in 105 AD as a cheaper, easier-to-make writing surface than rolls of silk, and it's easy to assume that someone soon figured out you can fold the newfangled sheets into geometric shapes.

The origami tradition managed to pass me by.

Paper-making reportedly came to Japan in the 7th century via the usual route of Buddhist monks who came from China through Korea. The Japanese studied the books the monks brought, and began making paper of their own by about 610 AD. Wherever it was invented, origami was fine-tuned by and has become associated with the Japanese.

Records in Japan of folded paper as an art or craft form show up during the Heian period, 794 to 1185, as a tradition of the noble classes - at the time paper was a rare commodity. Samurai exchanged gifts with noshi, a good-luck charm made of paper folded with a strip of dried abalone or meat, and the upper classes celebrated weddings by wrapping sake in butterfly forms representing the bride and groom.

The first written origami instructions were published in "Senbazuru Orikata" ("Thousand Crane Folding") in AD 1797. The "Kayaragusa," an encyclopedia of Japanese culture from 1845, included origami instructions too. The word origami originally referred to formal folded paper certificates that accompanied gifts and valuable objects, but it became associated with the playful kind of folding we know today in the late 19th and early 20th century.

But the origami tradition managed to pass me by.

The most I knew of origami was the popular story that many people know, of Sadako and the 1,000 cranes. Sadako Sasaki was two years old when Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945, and when she was 12 she was diagnosed with leukemia. According to a Japanese legend, someone makes 1,000 origami cranes they're granted a wish. Unfortunately, although Sadako made 644 cranes before she died, and her family and friends made the remainder in her memory. In her tribute, thousands of children the world over send origami cranes to adorn the statue of Sadako at Hiroshima's Peace Park today.

I'd always thought they looked cool, but of course could never make one. Erin finally taught me how to fold an origami crane a few weeks ago, and although I was a klutz and had to ask her over and over, I was amazed when I finally got it right, how proud I felt. It was especially satisfying because we were using tiny squares of origami paper, some with sold colors, some with gradated colors and some with intricate patterns.

We spent several nights just making a large flock of tiny, colorful origami cranes. Erin had been asked to set up a table at a New Year's health fair sponsored by Whole Foods, a local natural food supermarket, to promote her life coaching business, and we made the cranes to attract shoppers to her display as good luck charms for the new year, because in Asian cultures cranes represent long life and prosperity.

The cranes turned out to be a terrific conversation starter, even though the conversations weren't always about origami or coaching. A Chinese man from the meat department spoke to us at length about his childhood and told us the Chinese word for origami (which I've managed to forget). An older gentleman named Victor spent a half-hour chatting with us about such esoteric stuff that I finally asked him if he was a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado. Nope, he was a retired insurance salesman.

Throughout the day, the ones who were most excited by the cranes were kids being dragged along with their parents, or riding in the shopping carts. We made more cranes all day as we spoke with people.

Shoppers without kids walked by, marveled at the pretty sight of the cranes, chatted about the intricacy of origami folding and took one for good luck (many had done it before but had forgotten; one showed me how to make an origami ball; several teachers and many parents were familiar with the story of Sadako because it's often read in classes).

Towards the end of the day, a woman walked up to the table, looked at the cranes and asked if she could take one. A young man followed, well-groomed and polite. She said she would use the crane for her shrine at home. Her son, who was shopping with her, had just gotten his orders to ship out for the Persian Gulf, and, she explained with her eyes welling up, that she needed all the good luck she could get.

As she walked away, I wished I could help her make 1,000 cranes so her son would return home safely, or better yet, so that war might be avoided. I was moved by the power of this little symbol to help a mother deal with her fear. I hope it works.