On September 20th, I gave a remote talk at Papercamp 4, on the topic of Origami and Orientalism. I've long wanted to write an update to my 2022 essay, and I jumped on the opportunity to present that work to a new audience. The talk has been posted to YouTube (link below in the title); I've provided the transcript below. This was my first time giving a public speech about anything origami-related, so I hope you enjoy it!
Special thanks to Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino for organizing the event, as well as all of the guest speakers.
Origami and Orientalism
by Marcus
Hi. My name’s Marcus, and I’m an origami artist and blogger. I’ve been making origami for about sixteen years; I’ve been blogging about it for the last half of that period. Now, I’ve folded a fair number of models throughout the years. I’ve made things that are complex, like this Flying Samurai Helmet Beetle (it took 343 steps), and I’ve made things that are simple, like this peacock (it took 4 steps). I’ve made things that are realistic, like this octopus, and things that are abstract, like this polyhedron.
And that’s just the things I’ve folded. There are thousands of folders around the world, from France to Japan to America, that make these works of paper art. Art that goes beyond just beauty, that possesses meaning and emotional weight. Like these One-Crease Origami pieces by Paul Jackson, or these curved sculptures by Erik and Martin Demaine, or these animals by Bernie Peyton. Those are a few instances of a much bigger world of origami art.
As the origami world has gotten larger and more connected, origami communities have sprung up around the world. There are origami conventions, like the OrigamiUSA Convention in New York City, and dedicated origami publishers like Gallery Origami House in Tokyo. In San Francisco, California, there’s a store, called Paper Tree, which sells origami paper and books. The internet has done wonders for the origami community: there are origami YouTube channels and Discord servers and even an online origami competition. Origami is more than just an art form; it’s a living institution, it is a whole world unto itself.
Yet to so many people, origami is not that. Origami is still paper planes and fortune tellers and flapping birds. I know lots of people who’ve done origami in their lives, but most of them kind of grew out of it in elementary school. To many people, origami is fundamentally immature or childish. There are enormous artistic developments that have happened in origami, but most of them are completely unknown to the layperson. And the longer I’ve done origami, the more I’ve noticed this vast discrepancy between what origami is and what the larger public thinks it is.
So why don’t people take origami seriously? Actually, let me rephrase that question. Why are people trained not to take origami seriously? It may be an uncomfortable subject to approach, but this dismissal of origami does not come out of nowhere. There’s a common narrative surrounding origami, a narrative that everyone kind of vaguely knows but few have actually scrutinized in detail. And it’s rooted in a lot of different things, from gunboat diplomacy to magic exhibitions in Paris. Understanding that narrative requires a deep dive into the history of origami, into the political history of origami.
So let’s talk about The Ancient Japanese Art of Paperfolding. That’s kind of the name that I’ve given to this set of ideas. When I tell someone I’m an origami artist, the first thing that tends to come to mind is the rules of origami. Because origami is famous for having very strict rules. I’ve listed a couple of them here:
-Everything has to be made out of a square, a single square.
-No scissors, no glue.
-And it has to be made out of that special “origami paper.”
-And most of origami consists of a small set of traditional models.
-And origami is an old art; it’s been practiced for centuries in Japan, possibly China, for as long as paper itself has been around, and all these rules are about equally old.
Well, what if I told you that none of these were true? That’s right, exactly none of them. This is why it’s important to study origami history. Many ideas we hold about origami are no more than myth. But somehow, they persist, so let’s take a while to debunk some of them:
One of the most important works of early folding in Japan is called the Kan no Mado, a text from the 1700’s containing various animals and other figures. Right away, we see a lot of things that would never fly by modern standards. All these models require cuts, big slits in the middle of the paper. The paper is rarely ever square; many of the models are made from hexagons or triangles or even star shapes. So we can already see a contradiction here: ancient Japanese origami and pure no-cuts origami are not the same thing!
Jumping ahead to the 1970s, during the early days of what we might call modern origami, people were still debating whether cuts were okay. In small ways, scissors and non-square paper were still accepted in serious origami books, like Robert Harbin’s Secrets of Origami, pictured here. An early newsletter, The Origamian, once asked several significant folders about their opinions on cutting; as you can probably see, this was a field of active discussion. Some people accepted cuts, some rejected them, and some were ambivalent. Scissors and glue were only really phased out in the 90’s, when mathematical design techniques were introduced. People like Robert Lang in the US and Jun Maekawa in Japan proved anything was foldable with a single uncut square. Only then was the rule made strict. The hard limitations of origami, far from an ancient tradition, are the result of decades of continuous innovation—coming from both Japan and elsewhere.
And let’s also talk about origami paper. (This part should be fun for you guys!) What we tend to call “origami paper” is actually Western-style paper, mass produced from wood pulp. Most of its properties–its thinness, the fact that it’s only colored on one side–are designed to make it cheaper, rather than better for origami. Over time, the color degrades and the paper turns yellow because it’s not acid-free. And because it’s made from wood pulp, the fibers themselves are shorter, which weakens the paper and makes it hard to fold anything particularly complex from it. Traditional Japanese paper, or washi, is generally a superior material for folding. But it’s handmade by artisans and difficult to get your hands on. So only the most dedicated folders go out of their way to use washi (or other types of handmade paper). But these are the very same folders who push the art the furthest, who create the most intriguing and artistic models.
But okay, at least the traditional models are Japanese, right? Well…no. At least, not all of them. Who here has ever folded a house? Or a piano? Or a pig? Any of these? Well, these models and several others actually come from Europe—specifically, the work of Frobenius Froebel, the German educator who founded Kindergarten. Froebel’s educational program included paperfolding to teach geometry. His successors turned his geometric forms into simple animals and objects. During the Meiji Restoration, European kindergartens were actually imported to Japan, and the folding taught there was slowly incorporated into established Japanese traditions. In an essay by Koshiro Hatori, titled “History of Origami in the East and West Before Interfusion,” the author analyzes these different traditions and comes to the following conclusion:
“In the first years of the Meiji Restoration, in the 1860s and 1870s, the European education system was introduced to Japan. As a result, European origami was imported to Japan as a part of the kindergarten curriculum. In addition, as people traveled internationally, Japanese origami spread over the Western world. The state of origami as we know it today has been developed as a consequence of such a cultural exchange. Thus origami has never been a Japanese art.”
Okay, so the rules aren’t old, the old stuff isn’t Japanese, and the Japanese stuff breaks the rules. At this point, I could probably spend all day debunking The Ancient Japanese Art of Paperfolding in increasingly fine detail. But I won’t, because that would miss the larger picture. Instead, I want to ask: where did the Ancient Japanese Art of Paperfolding come from? What compels the West to make such sweeping generalizations about the artistic practices of the East? Well, okay, you’ve read the title. It’s Orientalism, that much should be clear. But I want to really dig into what that means. The point I am attempting to make is twofold: one, that the incredible richness of origami as an institution is largely neglected by the outside world; and two, that neglect is specifically due to social and political factors; namely, Orientalism. So how is that significant for us?
Orientalism, as originally described by Edward Said, is a framework by which the West views and constructs the East. Asian societies–whether in the so-called Middle East, the Far East, or in North Africa–are described as static, simple, and primitive. Meanwhile, the nations of the West are conceived as technologically advanced, logical, and modern. And thus the West is justified in its colonization of the East. As an institution and a set of beliefs, Orientalism wormed its way into all sorts of literature on Asia, whether it was treatises on religions like Islam and Hinduism or languages like Sanskrit and Chinese. Every aspect of Asian culture was viewed through an Orientalist lens.
Now, Edward Said was Palestinian, and his book originally focused on the Arab world. But later authors have expanded his ideas further east, to places like India and China and Japan. So let’s do a bit of analogizing. The Ancient Japanese Art of Paperfolding is a fairly poor description of origami, but it starts making sense in light of Orientalism. Take for instance, the obsession over origami rules. It’s a little ridiculous when you think about it–like, what art form doesn’t have at least some rules? But the rules of origami are seen as a hard limit on the imagination. Because, in Orientalism, the Orient is not allowed to imagine; only to be viewed, to be analyzed. There is a strong case to be made that the rules of origami may in fact stimulate the imagination, rather than stifle it. But after all, origami belongs to the Japanese, and that case is not one Orientalism is willing to entertain.
Another example happens when discussing origami in engineering. Origami has been used in things like solar panels and car airbags, and every time you see a YouTube video on one of these, it has the same opening line: “Origami, the ancient Japanese art of paperfolding.” “An art form centuries old gaining a new life.” Note here that there must always be that boundary, that dividing line. The East has their silly little paper toys; the West has turned them into modern science. And again, this has the effect of diminishing the significance of origami, specifically through its Asian-ness.
Even professional folders are not immune to Orientalism. Peter Engel, a folder and architect, once wrote an extensive essay on the geometry of the four Classic Bases. These four bases are some of the most fundamental in origami, and they are deeply geometrically related to one another. But in Engel’s essay, he makes sure to note that “…the Japanese stumbled upon them by accident. They paid little attention to the geometry of the square, and there is no indication that they recognized patterns in the paper.” Now, are we really meant to believe that, in all the centuries that the Japanese have been folding paper, in all the time they have known these bases, not a single individual ever made the connection between them? A connection that’s trivially easy to recognize once you start unfolding the Classic Bases? Is elementary geometry really beyond the capabilities of an entire nation? Or is that Orientalism talking again?
I want to return to Hatori’s words: “The state of origami today is a result of such cultural exchange. Thus origami has never been a Japanese art.” He correctly states that modern origami only arose through contact between Japan and the West. But at the same time, let’s call it what it is: that “cultural exchange” was not made between equal powers. It was an act of colonialism. The United States, Britain, and other European countries forced Japan to agree to unequal treaties for the purpose of exploiting its wealth. Origami was never a Japanese art because, by the time “origami” was invented, the Japanese no longer had control over it. And there’s no better example of that loss of agency than one particular model: the Flapping Bird.
First, let’s distinguish between the Flapping Bird and the crane. Both are well-known origami birds folded from the Bird Base, and they’re frequently confused for one another. But there is a difference: an extra step in the crane (on the left) narrows the head and tail flaps, locking them in place. The flapping bird (on the right) omits this step, so the wings flap when the tail is pulled. It's hard to tell which one is more famous these days (and the confusion between them doesn’t help matters). But the flapping bird has been significant: Lillian Oppenheimer, founder of OrigamiUSA, claimed to have been introduced to paperfolding through the flapping bird. And the British Origami Society has none other than the flapping bird as its logo.
So why focus on the Flapping Bird? Well, it turns out the Flapping Bird isn’t actually Japanese. It may sound Japanese–a lot of sources sure do say it is. In 1885, a French popular science magazine printed the first known diagrams for the Flapping Bird, attributing it to Japanese conjurors, or magicians, who performed in Europe and the United States. Over several years, this article was translated into English, Spanish, and other languages, spreading the Flapping Bird and its Japanese-ness throughout the Western world.
But while the Flapping Bird has many links to Japanese magicians performing in the West, strangely little comes out of Japan proper. Origami historian David Lister writes that upon his travels to Japan, virtually every Japanese person recognized the crane, but not the flapping bird. According to the folder David Mitchell, the oldest evidence that the Japanese knew it existed is from 1957, in a photo of the folder Gershon Legman (a white American) teaching it to some children. All this confusion means the flapping bird’s origins have long been a mystery to folders.
What’s going on here, then? This is where I should probably mention that stage magic has its own long and uncomfortable Orientalist history. Stage magic has long been a way of exoticizing Asia, reducing its beliefs to superstition, its culture to performance. One of the biggest culprits is William Robinson, who dressed in yellowface as the character of Chung Ling Soo and performed supposedly Chinese magic tricks. Much of his success came from appropriating the image of a real Chinese magician, named Ching Ling Foo. Another instance comes in the form of the Indian Rope Trick, a physics-defying illusion supposedly performed by Indian yogis that has long stymied attempts to prove that it actually existed. Many attempts to find the origins of the flapping bird are admirable, but they all have a key failing: none of them truly engage with Orientalism in stage magic, and how it might have shaped the Flapping Bird.
Through this lens, the “mystery” of the flapping bird’s origins makes a lot more sense. When Japanese magicians toured in the West, their audience didn’t want authenticity; they wanted entertainment. So the crane became the Flapping Bird. Art was turned down in favor of amusement. Then, the earliest folders–like Robert Harbin, who was himself a magician!–found themselves inspired by the flapping bird, and carried that inherent Orientalism into modern-day origami. Even today, origami artists still refer to the Flapping Bird as the Japanese Flapping Bird. The Orientalist ideas of the magicians have never left us.
The founders of Western origami societies–Lillian Oppenheimer, Robert Harbin, Sam Randlett, and so on–clearly had a great love for origami, and for Japanese culture at large. That much I can’t deny. But as Edward Said says: “[Orientalism] provided the Orient with sympathetic European students, genuinely interested in such matters as Sanskrit grammar, Phoenician numismatics, and Arabic poetry (we can add Japanese origami to the list). Yet–and here we must be very clear–Orientalism overrode the Orient.” It didn’t matter how much they wanted to learn; their biases, unconsciously shaped by Orientalist propaganda, won out in the end.
Said continues his explanation: “As a system of thought about the Orient, it always rose from the specifically human detail to the general transhuman one; an observation about a tenth-century Arab poet multiplied itself into a policy towards (and about) the Oriental mentality in Egypt, Iraq, or Arabia.” So the common view of origami that I mentioned at the beginning–how origami is all paper airplanes and fortune tellers, an amusement for children–goes directly back to these magic shows and the Orientalism therein. Origami was used for children’s entertainment in a single instance, so that’s all origami was allowed to be in the Orientalist eye. If you’re wondering where the Ancient Japanese Art of Paperfolding comes from, that’s it. That’s the answer.
At this point, you’re probably wondering: what can we do about this? What can we do about Orientalism in origami? I’m not going to act like I have all the solutions, because that’s not my job. I’m not naïve enough to think that treating origami like a proper art will lead to the end of Orientalism. But I write essays and give talks anyway, because what I do believe can end Orientalism is a community. A community that knows alternative ways of thinking about Asia, that allows it to speak for itself. And I hope I am able to start a community like that within origami.
Already, there are instances of the active politicization of origami. In Vietnam, origami artists have helped revive traditional Vietnamese papermaking, which has long been endangered by faster and more profitable Western-style paper mills. In the US, the organization Tsuru for Solidarity uses the crane as a symbol of peace and advocates for the closing of migrant concentration camps. Two examples do not make a movement, of course. But they can give us lessons: origami is capable of encapsulating political struggle, it makes different worlds possible through artistic practice. I am on a mission to discover as many of those worlds as I can–and I invite all of you to join me.
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