The flight back from Oaxaca seemed to take forever, but I fear it was only
Judiths disgust with me that made it seem interminable. Anyway, we got home and life
returned to normal, or even better than normal, even supernormal, if there is such a
word. I told Judith I was sorry about the comments I made about her parents and the
Day of the Dead celebration, and she apologized for her brazen flirting with that goodfor-nada bullfighter. Then, in an effort to cement our new-found bond, Judith enrolled us
in an origami class. Oh great, I thought, my marriage has been reduced to folded
paper. But now that Ive been in the class for a few weeks, I must admit that I love it.
Origami is amazing and beautiful.
On the evening of our first class, the instructor, a cheerful gray-haired woman
named Alessandra, told us the riveting story of Tsuru no On-gaeshi (A Repaying Crane):
Once upon a time, there was a poor hunter. One day, he came across a trapped
crane. He took pity on the crane and released it. A few days later, a lovely woman
visited his house, and asked him to shelter for the night. Soon the two got married.
The bride was sweet in disposition as well as beautiful, so they lived happily. But
the hunter couldnt afford to support his new wife. One day, she said she would weave
cloth for him to sell at market, but she told him never to see her weaving.
She stayed in a weaving hut for three days. When she finished weaving, she
emerged with a beautiful fabric. He brought the fabric to town, where merchants were
surprised and paid gold for it. The fabric was very rare and called Tsuru-no-senba-ori
(thousand feathers of crane).
This story made me feel good inside. I learned to appreciate the art of origami, and I
decided to read as much about its history as time allowed.
The name origami was coined in 1880 for the words oru (to fold) and kami (paper). It
started in the first century AD in China. (I thought it started in Japan, but Judith quickly
pointed out the error in my thinking.) They say thats when papermaking started, and
with papermaking came paper folding. The Chinese developed some simple forms,
some of which survive to this day. Buddhist monks brought Origami to Japan in the
sixth century AD. It caught on quickly throughout the culture: paper was used in
architecture and in many everyday rituals. Many of the earliest designs have been lost,
since there was nothing written down about origami until 1797 with the publication of
the Senbaduru Orikata (How to Fold One Thousand Cranes). The Kan no mado (Window
of Midwinter), a comprehensive collection of traditional Japanese figures, was published
in 1845.
Origami flourished in other parts of the world, as well. Arabs brought the secrets of
papermaking to North Africa, and in the eighth century AD, the Moors brought the
secrets of Spain. The Moors, devoutly religious, were forbidden to create
representational figures. Their paper folding was a study in geometry. After the Moors
were driven out of Spain during the Inquisition (Judith gave me a look, but then
softened into a smile), the Spanish developed papiroflexia, which sounds to me like
some sort of inflammation of the Popes ligaments. Anyway, this technique is still
popular in Spain and Argentina.
Modern origami owes its existence to a man named Akira Yoshizawa. In the 1930s,
Yoshizawa designed thousand of models of various subjects. He is the originator of the
system of lines and arrows used in modern paper folding. He exhibited his work
throughout the west in the 1950s and 1960s and helped inspire many paper-folders in
the west as well as Japan.
As origami evolves, elaborate folding techniques produce amazing models.
In our class, Judith specialized in creature fish and sea creature origami. During the
first two weeks of training, she produced a horseshoe crab, a goldfish, a strikingly
beautiful seahorse, a so-so squid, and a lopsided clam, basing her patterns on Barbour,
Andreozzi, and Robinson.
Origami tessellations has grown in popularity recently, but has an extensive history.
Tessellations refer to the tiling of the plane where a collection of two-dimensional
figures fill a plane with no gaps or overlaps. Origami tessellations are tessellations
made from a flat material, most often paper, but it can be from anything that holds a
crease. The history of costuming includes tessellations done in fabric that are recorded
as far back as the Egyptian Tombs. Fujimoto was an early Japanese master who
published books with tessellations.
