Japanese Paper Arts

About this book

A single square of paper, two hundred worlds inside it. Japanese Paper Arts is the complete English guide to origami and the paper crafts of Japan: 200 entries in five parts — the classical models (crane, balloon, helmet, jumping frog and 36 more), the grammar of folds and bases beneath them, the sister arts of cutting, tearing, pasting, knotting and building in paper, the ceremonies, festivals and regions that give the folding its meaning, and a full practitioner's handbook for learning, teaching, buying, displaying and designing. Every entry follows one format — origin, technique, character, and where to meet it today with the official source to check — so the book works as a cover-to-cover read and as a reference for a lifetime of folding. Diagram-free by design: this is the cultural guide that diagram books never had room to be.