Japanology with Peter Barakan, origami

"The simple yet profound world of origami" So that's what it is, profound? I always thought it was simple, idle, and rather stupid. When the narrator said that Saburo Kase, "...with his fingertips touched the children's hots" and that's what he said literally, I thought now take care there, Buddy.

This whole series is great. Each aspect of Japanese culture that's covered is tremendously well researched. The copy I watched loses audio in a few critical places, the first serious gap at the history of origami, and that's too bad because whatever is missed was really good.

I'm looking for a book to send to a child. I'm thinking of buying one in Japanese and also Japanese paper. The books in English do not look interesting by Amazon's look inside feature. The video makes clear instructional words are not necessary. It's demonstration that counts. The video demonstrates making a crane and the folds all came flooding back over decades. See, the head and the tail are the same thing as wings except folded in half to be thinner. The hands making it are nice with cute stubby little well groomed fingers.

This is not for you. It's for children. Still, if you don't feel compelled to at least try your hand at folding a crane then, well, pffffft, I just can't even. You'll notice they show a step they neglect describing. They make pre-folds that show in the video, and they are important to get the wings, neck and tail exactly right. Otherwise you end up with clumsy folds.

I was especially interested in prayer without religion. While unified activity without unified focus is absent spiritual power such as group prayer. Such as a class of schoolchildren making ten thousand cranes without knowing the purpose as they are folding then the cranes can hold no focused spiritual energy. And after all that, in both cases mentioned, Sadako Sasaki, the girl exposed to radiation from Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombing, and with great spiritual individual focus, who wished to be healed of leukemia, and Saburo Kase who became ill and was sent such a bundle of cranes produced with great group spiritual focus, both died, disproving the myth that a wish will come true. Yet the myth and the paper folding activity persist. Because it is charming and because it is engaging to children.