Special FeatureOrigami

Exploring the Frontiers of Origami

The scops owl takes shape (left to right). Tsuda must have made it many times before—it took him only about 20 minutes to fold it.

Of all the works on the living room display shelf, the mosquito stands out the most. It looks like an alien with its sharp, arrow-like mouth, its long legs, and the metallic light it gives off. Made from a single sheet of silver paper, it is more than 10 cm long.

Tsuda Yoshio is known for his origami representations of creatures from the natural world, and many of them, like the mosquito, are insects. This is not surprising because he is a researcher in insect ecology. Mosquitoes are the focus of his studies these days.

“I go to Southeast Asia and Okinawa in southern Japan to study mosquitoes, and I often see insects and animals that are so fascinating I want to make origami versions of them. Many of the ideas for my current works come from them.”

When he was in Minami Daito Island (Okinawa Prefecture) in March 2006, he found himself face-to-face with a scops owl some university students kept as a pet. On the airplane on his way home he began wondering if he could make one out of paper, playing up the owl's cute, perfectly round eyes. A few weeks later he had basically figured out how to do it.

Tsuda was around 12 when he began making things with folded paper. It all started when he happened to see an origami angelfish on TV. That set him wondering if he could make one himself. At first he had no idea what folds to make, but through trial and error he ended up with a fish that looked something like the real thing. He could hardly contain his excitement, and decided then and there to try to make things no paper folder had ever made before.

“Back then, my method was to begin by just folding the paper to see what I could come up with. After folding for a while, if the thing looked like, say, a duck, I'd think ‘duck’ and work on it until I had it right.”

But when he was about 30 years old, another paper folder who was around the same age, Maekawa Jun, published a new theory on origami design. Maekawa's new technique involved designing the object before folding.

“For us, this was practically a revolution. We learned that the first step is to decide what we want to create, then apply the design techniques needed to create it. Maekawa's method is far more efficient.”

One of Tsuda's works is a pair of geta clogs, wooden footwear used with traditional Japanese dress. When they think of geta, Japanese people tend to get swept up in a fondness for old traditions. One day, Tsuda was asked to design something that might give Western people the same kind of feeling. His answer: old-fashioned lace-up boots. The problem, though, was the laces—they just would not turn out right. The challenge he had set himself was, of course, to use just one sheet of paper per boot, and to avoid cutting it. “Origami is fascinating partly because of those two rules. But the rules, of course, make the design difficult. It took me about two years before I had the design concept right for the laces.

“Sometimes there's that ‘Eureka!’ moment when the design concept just hits you. That's the best moment in the entire creative process,” Tsuda says, his eyes shining with the excitement of a 12-year old.

Some of Tsuda's origami art:
Scops owls. Using different paper sizes and colors creates a different effect. A carnivorous dinosaur. The head and mouth are big and the hands are small, giving this meat eater a rather frightening look. A conch shell. The round form made from two-dimensional paper is most impressive. This calliphora lata fly has an amusing appearance. An insect called a treehopper. Tsuda says he had a lot of trouble getting the horns to look threatening.