Everything is Awesome
or, The Emotional Emptiness of the Ryujin 3.5
by Marcus
“Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired. There is, in other words, nothing new about it.” –Mary Oliver, poet
“I play things that are outwardly flashy. But if there were no music in it, I wouldn’t bother with it. If people only see the artifice, I feel that I’ve failed.”–Marc-Andre Hamelin, pianist
“I hate models ‘without life and profundity’ or ‘complex models with complexity as a goal’ which requires ‘2,753 steps.’ The complexity race in today’s origami world is only natural, I understand, but techniques are just ‘methods’ but not ‘goals,’ we should all have in mind.”–Eric Joisel, folder
Part 1: Introduction
For most of its history, origami was not that complex. The canon of designs was small and simple, designed for children. If you wanted a lot of points in a model, you whipped out your scissors and started cutting. But something eventually changed. Folders demanded more from their models–like animals having four legs instead of three. Eventually, people started applying mathematical principles to origami, studying the geometry of paper and learning to design custom, arbitrarily complex forms. Thus began an explosion of technique, a proliferation of models beyond anything previously imagined. Modern origami is a direct result of these innovations, a constantly expanding kaleidoscope of ever more complex works.
This is not an essay on the revolution in mathematical origami design. Many folders have written on this topic; I would like to respect their work. But I find it more interesting to discuss the social consequences of that revolution. In an era of vastly increased technical possibility, a new breed of origami artist has emerged: the virtuoso. Like Paganini at the violin and Liszt at the piano, origami has reached the point where people are showing off with it. Dragons, knights, and insects dominate the modern origami landscape. Folders–primarily young men–venerate the great virtuosos like Satoshi Kamiya and Robert Lang. An entire Discord server exists just for advice on folding Kamiya’s Ryujin 3.5 (the origami equivalent of Liszt’s Sonata in B Minor).
This technical explosion has done a lot for origami. Origami has become more complex and realistic, capable of depicting figures in greater detail than ever before. But there is a flip side to all this advancement. What happens when showmanship becomes our dominant, overriding goal? What happens when the reaction to our folds that we prize above all else is “Wow, that’s awesome?” I am not opposed to technical advancement in and of itself. But technical advancement does not exist in a vacuum–it carries certain values and shapes origami culture in significant ways. I want to highlight specific instances of that cultural shift in different groups of virtuoso folders, taking lessons from each. Then we can understand the virtuoso’s motivation, how the nature of virtuosity has evolved in recent years, and come to terms with the price of making everything awesome.
Part 2: The Bug Wars
In the 1990s and early 2000s, an event known as the Bug Wars swept the origami world, as mathematical design techniques made their debut. Complex folders turned their eyes to the subject of insects–previously impossible to pull off with a single sheet and no cuts. Jun Maekawa started out with a flying kabutomushi, but other members of the “Origami Tanteidan” soon joined in; Seiji Nishikawa, Fumiaki Kawahata, and even Robert Lang took part in the informal competition. By Lang’s own recollection, everyone involved was in a constant effort to one-up everyone else: “Did he bring a beetle last year? This year, I’ll bring a winged beetle. Next year, someone brings a winged spotted beetle! And so it goes.”
Why insects? One reason is probably because their complex, many-legged nature makes them impressive showpieces, and such folders enjoyed the challenge (discussed previously in My Favorite Works: Satoshi Kamiya’s Cicada Nymph). But there is a second, opposing reason. While insects are hard to fold, they’re surprisingly easy to design with the methods pioneered in the Bug Wars. Mathematical design starts with a stick figure: an abstract diagram showing the number, length, and spacing of points in a base. Various algorithms plot these on the paper as circles or polygons, giving a crease pattern to be turned into the finished model. Since these methods are built to prioritize length over width, they often produce long, skinny flaps, befitting the long, skinny appendages of insects and other arthropods.
By the early 2000s, however, the Bug Wars started to peter out. Complex bugs oversaturated the origami space and lost their initial novelty. Satoshi Kamiya describes a shift in priorities among insect creators in response: “The ‘Insect Wars’ in the 1990s produced many complex insect models… This in turn made us feel it taken for granted to fold out many flaps, so the next goal for folders had become precision/accuracy, only naturally.”
Virtuosity alone was no longer enough to sustain interest in insects. Large numbers of points became boring, and insect folders had to take their models in different directions to make them interesting again. Newer insects saw variation in limb thicknesses, pleats to create texture, and other methods to capture the character of specific insects–in other words, technique applied to interpretation. It makes sense, then, that the Bug Wars ended around this time. Complexity is easy to quantify: numbers of points, grid dimensions, relative size of a model. With more subtle factors in the mix, direct competition became more elusive, making it harder to call insect design a “war” of any kind.
Today, complex insects are still created, but they are not the hotbed of innovation they once were. Some still fold in the tradition of the Bug Wars, closely imitating real-life insects. Simplified or cartoonish insects are also emerging as a distinct style, such as Hidehisa Inayoshi’s Ladybug or Kiyoto’s chibi kabutomushi. The days of stile brilliante insects are over. But the spirit of showmanship did not die; it merely reemerged elsewhere. The next stop on our journey takes us from Japan to France, and from there to the new face of complex origami in the 21st century.
Part 3: The Rooster Painter
If ever there was a virtuoso more astonishing than Robert Lang or Satoshi Kamiya, it was the late French origamist Eric Joisel. In a world of insects and deer, Joisel took complex origami to a new level: dwarven musicians, creatures from fantasy and mythology, and commedia dell’arte archetypes. For the first time, origami had human beings with fully sculpted poses and expressions. Naturally, his models were incredibly time-consuming and difficult to create. But even more so, his figures had character. Each one was unique and irreplaceable, gaining him a well-deserved reputation as an origami artist of the highest order.
A whole genre of folding sprang up in the years after Joisel’s death: the complex humanoid figure. Folders like Boice Wong, Brandon Wong (no relation), Chris Conrad, and Michael Nguyen have taken up the challenge set by Joisel and designed fully fleshed-out characters from origami. On a foundation of box-pleating, complex folders have revitalized the Bug Wars in a new medium: armored samurai, knights, deities, anime characters, and so on. They make use of massive grids on paper several feet square, sparing no details in their depictions. It is awesome in every sense of the word.
One cannot deny Joisel’s importance to these folders. Many are friends and collaborators who share design philosophies. Conrad has folded an explicit tribute in “Roses for Joisel,” Nguyen has acknowledged Joisel’s influence on his shaping, and others likely share that influence. Yet as visually impressive as they are, something always feels missing from this new generation of figures. What do I mean by this? Compare Joisel’s Barbarian with a similar work, Boice Wong’s Dragon Plate Armor:
Top: Barbarian, Eric Joisel. Bottom: DPA w/ Sword, Boice Wong.
Wong’s design has many features that Joisel’s does not. The horns on the helmet are longer and more numerous (and therefore harder). The legs are visible and fully detailed, with the same spiky armor plating that covers the torso and shield. Taken together, the DPA is arguably a more complex model than the Barbarian (or at least appears to be). Yet the whole is less than the sum of its parts: the spiky texture starts to seem repetitive, compared to Joisel’s Barbarian which uses a diversity of textures throughout. The Barbarian exploits texture far more effectively, going from smoothness on the shield to pleated spines on the armored torso to wrinkled cloth-like sheets on the cape.
The cape wrinkles demonstrate another of Joisel’s qualities: imperfection. The deliberately messy texture gives the Barbarian a sense of history, conjuring an image of a hardy, well-worn traveler. The pleats on the armor are similarly irregular, as if suggesting a history of battle. Conversely, the sharp precision of the DPA’s shaping makes it feel cold and sterile (a feeling not helped by the lighting). The DPA has a more dynamic pose, but here we see Wong’s error in judgement: motion does not automatically mean life. Joisel’s Barbarian tells an entire story while standing perfectly still–an incredible achievement, and one that Boice Wong, and many others, have yet to accomplish.
In music, the composer and musicologist Alistair Hinton draws a distinction between technique and mechanics. Mechanics–which the word technique is often used to mean–are the purely physical aspect of playing an instrument, whereas technique should mean the whole of a musician’s performance, including the mental aspects of interpretation: the soul put into a piece. A piano showpiece like La Campanella is often played with great mechanical fluency but a lack of emotion. Similarly, a origami showpiece may demonstrate skills such as box-pleating, intricate spiky textures, and even curved shaping–but such a work will feel hollow without a strong interpretive vision. Joisel’s imitators may possess great mechanical skill, but, as in the early Bug Wars, mechanics alone do not make art.
It is telling that one of Joisel’s origami idols was not a mechanical virtuoso like Lang or Kamiya, but Vietnamese folder Giang Dinh, known for minimalist and (deceptively) simple wet-folded figures. Joisel, unlike many other folders, had extensive training in sculpture before turning to origami. He could make works that resisted immediate comprehension, that drew you in to try and understand them further. That quality is far more valuable, in my eyes, than merely being “awesome.” It’s also where many of his imitators fall short and remain just that: imitators.
My favorite thing about Joisel isn’t the detail of his textures. It isn’t even the shaping of his faces. It’s his sense of time. Everything in Joisel’s oeuvre feels improvised on the spot (he likened his work to jazz), despite their immense complexity telling you they must have taken ages. That contradiction in time scales is what baffles me the most about Eric Joisel, and it’s what keeps me coming back to his works year after year. But it is by no means unique to him; it merely takes hard work and patience. The man who paints a rooster in ten seconds builds up to it for ten years. Given time, any one of Joisel’s many imitators is capable of achieving that same artistic height. I am, at the moment, still waiting.
Part 4: The Girl with a Thousand Cranes
The senbazuru–the folding of one thousand cranes–is easily the most recognizable origami work in popular culture. It’s funny because, from a mechanical perspective, it’s incredibly basic. The crane, while not trivial, is just a few folds away from the Bird Base. It can be made with cheap kami and requires no special treatments. And once you’ve made one, the most demanding part of the process is sitting through it again, 999 more times. Yet it’s held up as the pinnacle of the art, the highest form of origami a person can achieve.
Why is that? The answer lies in its history. The modern history of the senbazuru starts with Sadako Sasaki, a young girl living in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped on the city. Years later, at the age of twelve, she developed leukemia as a consequence of the radiation. As she lay sick and dying in the hospital, she started to fold a thousand paper cranes, following the belief that doing so would grant one a wish from the heavens. When she died, her story spread around the world, and so did the crane. Sadako’s cranes have come to symbolize peace, the innocence of childhood, and the anti-nuclear weapons movement.
Today, a statue of Sadako Sasaki stands in Hiroshima, and children from around the world donate strings of cranes to the park in her memory. Elsewhere, the use of the crane often alludes to Sasaki, particularly among Japanese cultural and political organizations. One modern example is Tsuru for Solidarity, a movement of Japanese Americans who aim to abolish immigrant concentration camps in the US. Their logo, an origami crane, ties the Japanese American internment during WWII together with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, recontextualizing the crane as a symbol of collective resistance. The senbazuru, then, is more than just a model. It is a symbol of community, layered deep with allusions, with a real history behind it. Of course it is placed on this pedestal when it carries so much weight.
If truth be told, most of that symbolism tends to get lost on the general public. In my personal experience, most admiration for the senbazuru comes from the fact that it’s long, arduous, and impressive-looking–a poor man’s Ryujin 3.5. Perhaps that’s why many virtuoso folders have a certain disdain for it (“oh, you think that’s what complex origami looks like?”) Jokes at the senbazuru’s expense abound among such folders.
Why are cranes included twice in the list of "not real origami?"
But the true value of the senbazuru only becomes clear when we move beyond the perspective of complexity altogether. When I see a collection of a thousand cranes, I no longer care whether it counts as a “real” complex model. I see instead the history behind it, the legacy of hundreds of activists over multiple decades. Their efforts have left ripples in the world, pieces of influence that have all led up to one person’s decision to make it. In other words, its popularity is well and truly earned. I only wish we could say the same thing about more origami compositions.
Part 5: More than Awesome
Today’s origami world is overrun by virtuoso mania. It exists on the Origami-dan Discord server, where the word “origami” really refers to “complex figurative origami.” It exists among South Korea’s Origami Bros, creators of the supercomplex Origami Pro series. It exists on popular origami YouTube channels such as FearlessFlourish and origami_kimiro. Its ultimate expression is found in origami competitions like the International Origami Internet Olympiad (IOIO), the Joisel Awards, or the Origami-dan Death Battle. And these in particular mark a shift in the nature of virtuosity, with consequences resonating even beyond those of the Bug Wars and the Joisel imitators.
Throughout this essay, I have used classical music metaphors to describe origami. This is no accident; origami shares many parallels with classical music, and similar historical trends have occurred in both. Today’s pianists, for instance, increasingly rely on competitions to start their careers. Just last year, the International Chopin Competition drew an all-time record number of applicants, which competition director Artur Szklener attributed to the “increasing rivalry and number of competitions, as well as the commercialization of the market.” Being merely a talented pianist cannot launch one’s career. One must be the best pianist, explicitly measured against others. Dozens, maybe hundreds, must fail for one person to succeed.
In this hyper-competitive environment, pianists looking to climb the ranks will prioritize a single aspect of performance: showmanship. The pianist Bogdan Dulu sums it up neatly: “If technical progression is to prevail among everything else, then many hours of practice will be spent on just that. Music as sport is born.” That shift stems from an increasingly competitive music industry and–more fundamentally–a world entrenched in late capitalism that reduces all human life to competition. Origami is not exempt from this horse-racing mentality. The rise of the “everything is awesome” attitude is inextricable from competition, the two reinforcing each other in a vicious cycle. Origami has started down the path walked by classical music years earlier, with predictable results.
The origami competitions of the past, such as the Bug Wars or the OrigamiUSA Design Challenge, were low-stakes, informal events. Present-day competitions take themselves much more seriously, with official winners ranked by juries of well-known folders. As origami competitions continue to grow in popularity, the number and scale of such events is guaranteed to increase. So too will their importance; virtuoso origami creators are already advertising themselves as winners of the Joisel Awards or the IOIO. The “remarkably collegial” atmosphere once described by Robert Lang is threatened, slowly being replaced by the desire to be more complex, more technical, more impressive than the other guy.
Literal competitions are only one part of the story. Social media algorithms have accelerated the process as well by prioritizing engagement and attention, pushing origami creators on social media to compete for views with the most eye-catching, virtuosic folds. (That many major competitions exist primarily online is no coincidence.) Such an environment has lasting consequences for origami. It will reward the mechanical virtuoso. It will reward awesome feats of showmanship. But it will rarely reward works that are slow and contemplative, that possess deeper symbolism or elicit nuanced emotions. Attributes that cannot be measured will be treated as secondary, subsumed into the all-important “awesomeness.”
The virtuoso’s motivation has always been more external than internal. The great pianist Franz Liszt was practically a rockstar in his youth, summoning legions of crazed fangirls to his concerts. But in his later years, he rejected virtuoso excess, composed deeply spiritual and introspective works, and pushed the boundaries of tonality itself. So I close with a question to the aspiring (or present!) origami virtuoso: what do you want out of your origami? I know what I want to create: origami that defies easy interpretation, that resonates beyond the initial feelings of awe. Origami can be so much more than pale imitations of Robert Lang and Eric Joisel.
Origami can be comedic, like the minimalist works of Jeremy Shafer and David Mitchell. It can be naturalistic like the crumpled shapes of Vincent Floderer. It can be subtle like the wet-folded animals of Yoshizawa. It can be quietly symbolic like the senbazuru and its many derivatives. Such works demand just as much technique (in the Hintonian sense) as insects and dragons. Because above all, origami is art, and its creators should give origami the respect that art deserves. Origami has the power to inspire so many emotions, so many interpretations, so many ways of viewing the world. It can be so much more than awesome.
Sources
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DiCicco, Sue, and Masahiro Sasaki. “The Complete Story of Sadako Sasaki.” Santa Barbara: Armed with the Arts, Inc., 2018.
Tsuru for Solidarity, “Mission and History.” https://tsuruforsolidarity.org/mission-history/
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