Origami of the week

Three weeks ago, Lucinda and Blaine went to see Nishimachi's middle-school play, A Thousand Cranes, which is a fictional account of a girl who survives the bombing of Hiroshima but eventually dies of leukemia caused by the radiation. The girl, Sadako Sasaki, tries to fold 1,000 origami cranes that would grant her one wish, to live.

Lucinda was quite inspired by the play and, 10 days ago, she brought home an origami crane that she'd folded in Japanese class with her teacher's help. A few days later, she showed me one that she'd done by herself in class. And since then, she's been coming home from school, sitting at the kitchen table, and folding more cranes.

It's been neat to watch her gain confidence with practice; at times, she was frustrated if the folds didn't turn out properly and ripped them up - but now she knows what she's doing.

So here are three recent cranes, with varying degrees of precision.



Throughout the school year, I've assumed that in-class origami was the teacher's way of inspiring children to enjoy the daily Japanese lesson. But a crane is not just a crane!

I realized recently that practicing origami teaches children some crucial skills as they learn how to write Japanese characters (that is, hiragana, katakana and kanji.) First, origami takes practice. Second, the folding improves a child's fine motor skills and spacial relations.

But maybe most importantly, origami has taught Lucinda that she has to remember a series of steps and do them in the right order - or it won't look right. The same is true with Japanese writing, as each character must be precisely remembered and precisely written.