Akira Yoshizawa Celebrated With Oragami Google Doodle

Today’s Google Doodle celebrates the life and work of Akira Yoshizawa, the grandfather of modern Oragami, who would have turned 101 today.

Web Pro News reports that the self-taught origami master worked several jobs before he was recognized for his craft in the 1950s.

Akari first recognized the potential of his work while working in a machine-tool factory. Akari used his origami to teach geometry to apprentices. In the 1930s, Yoshizawa joined a Buddhist priesthood. A few years later he joined the Japanese medical corps during WWII and often gave his patients paper sculptures.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that many of Akari’s techniques, such as “wet folding,” are still widely used today. Akira also developed a system of origami notation that allowed people all over the world to follow the same set of instructions.

The New York Times writes: (Akira Yoshizawa) “pioneered a system of origami notation that allows readers of any language to follow a set of printed instructions. Using dotted lines to indicate the folds and arrows to indicate the directions of the folds, the system is widely used today.”

Robert J. Lang created the new Google doodle to honor the origami master on what would have been his 101st birthday. (Yoshizawa passed away in 2005 at the age of 94.)

Lang said:

“While there were other Japanese artists who explored their country’s folk art contemporaneously with Yoshizawa, his work inspired the world through a combination of grace, beauty, variety and clarity of presentation. To him, each figure, even if folded from the same basic plan, was a unique object with a unique character.”

Here’s a video about Robert Lang’s Google doodle tribute to Akira Yoshizawa.

Do you do origami?