Origami Tsuru

Paper Cranes

Origami is the art of paper folding, passed from China to Japan in ancient times, but now is known worldwide. Paper cranes are traditional Japanese symbols of peace, good luck, and good health, along with symbols of fidelity and longevity in marriage. Paper cranes are becoming international symbols for all of these things, however.

Red-crowned cranes, after which origami paper cranes are modeled, are also national symbols in Japan and China. These cranes mate for life and can live for over 70 years, hence the association with marriage. There are also only about 2,000 of these birds left in the wild, so like random acts of kindness, they are rare.

A Japanese legend is that if you make a thousand paper cranes, you'll get a wish.

After the bombing of Hiroshima, a little girl named Sadako Sasaki developed leukemia and, while in the hospital, decided to make the thousand. Sadako did finish the thousand paper cranes, and, after her passing, her classmates started a campaign to memorialize her and all the other children victims of the nuclear bombs. This created the Children's Peace Monument in Japan, and started a worldwide movement of paper cranes for peace, a symbol of the need to end and disarm all nuclear weapons.

animated instructions for making a paper crane

The thousand paper crane legend

Sadako (hiroshima bombing survivor) and the thousand paper cranes

Information about Origami

Information about Red-crowned Cranes

Can't decide what to do with all those cranes you've folded? Judy of The Crane Project is collecting wax paper cranes in memory of all the lives lost in the Iraq war.

Myth and Lore

The cranes' beauty and their spectacular mating dances have made them highly symbolic birds from earliest times.

A crane is considered auspicious in Japan, as one of the symbols of longevity and represented with other symbols of long life, the pine and bamboo, and the tortoise. In feudal Japan the crane was protected by the ruling classes and fed by the peasants. When the feudal system was abolished in the Meiji era of the 19th century, the protection of cranes was lost. With effort they have been brought back from the brink of extinction. It is believed that if one folds 1000 origami cranes, according to Japanese tradition, one's wish for health will be granted. Since the death of Sadako Sasaki this applies to a wish for peace as well.

Zenbatsuru

(also Senbatsuru -1000 cranes on a string)

For traditional Chinese 'heavenly cranes' (tian-he) or 'blessed cranes' (xian-he) were messengers of wisdom. Legendary Taoist sages who were transported between heavenly worlds on the backs of cranes.

Sadako Sasaki

Sadako Sasaki (January 7, 1943 - October 25, 1955) was a Japanese girl who lived near Misasa Bridge in Hiroshima, Japan. Sadako was a victim of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and was only two years old on August 6, 1945. At the time of the explosion she was at home, about 1 mile from ground zero. Ten years later she was diagnosed with leukemia, which her mother called "an atom bomb disease."[1]
In November 1954, lumps developed on her neck and behind her ears. In January 1955, purple spots started to form on her legs. She was hospitalized on February 21, 1955 and given, at the most, a year to live.

Sadako and the paper cranes
On August 3, 1955, Chizuko Hamamoto - Sadako's best friend - came to the hospital to visit and cut a golden piece of paper into a square and folded it into a paper crane. At first Sadako didn't understand why Chizuko was doing this but then Chizuko retold the story about the paper cranes. Inspired by the crane, she started folding them herself, spurred on by the Japanese saying that one who folded 1,000 cranes was granted a wish. A popular version of the story is that she fell short of her goal of folding 1,000 cranes, having folded only 644 before her death, and that her friends completed the 1,000 and buried them all with her. This comes from the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. An exhibit which appeared in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum stated that by the end of August, 1955, Sadako had achieved her goal and continued to fold more cranes.
Though she had plenty of free time during her days in the hospital to fold the cranes, she lacked paper. She would use medicine wrappings and whatever else she could scrounge up. This included going to other patients' rooms to ask to use the paper from their get-well presents. Chizuko would bring paper from school for Sadako to use.

During her time in hospital her condition progressively worsened. Around mid-October her left leg became swollen and turned purple. After her family urged her to eat something, Sadako requested tea on rice and remarked "It's good." Those were her last words. With her family around her, Sadako died on the morning of October 25, 1955.

Memorial
After her death, Sadako's friends and schoolmates published a collection of letters in order to raise funds to build a memorial to her and all of the children who had died from the effects of the atomic bomb. In 1958, a statue of Sadako holding a golden crane was unveiled in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also called the Genbaku Dome. At the foot of the statue is a plaque that reads, This is our cry. This is our prayer. Peace in the world.
The following haiku was attributed to Sadako. It translates into English as:

I shall write peace upon your wings, your heart and you shall fly around the world so that children will no longer have to die this way.

There is also a statue of her in the Seattle Peace Park. Sadako has become a leading symbol of the impact of a nuclear war. Sadako is also a heroine for many girls in Japan. Her story is told in some Japanese schools on the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. Dedicated to her, people all over Japan celebrate August 15 as the annual peace and love day.
Every day more cranes continue to arrive at the memorial from children all over the world in the hope for peace.