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Kazuko Law - Temari and Origami
by Robert L. Stone
Temari is the traditional Japanese art of decorating spheres by winding and lacing colored threads in intricate patterns around a core ball. Origami, which originated around 600 A.D., is the art of folding colored paper into three-dimensional shapes. Kazuko Law of Gulf Breeze, near Pensacola, was born on the island of Hokkaido, Japan, in 1929. As a young girl, she began to learn the ancient arts of temari and origami from her grandmother and great grandmother. "Every evening after dinner we spent about 45 minutes with our grandparents," she recalls. "My grandmother would teach us and tell stories."
Law is a multi-talented artist who is also accomplished in Japanese dance, the traditional tea ceremony and doll making. She practiced traditional arts regularly until she married an American military man in 1950. The responsibilities of raising a family left her little time to continue her arts until the mid-1960s.
The special thread used for temari and the preferred rice paper for origami are not commonly available in the United States. So, whenever she visits her family in Japan, Law buys what she needs and ships it to Gulf Breeze. While in Japan she also visits older people who practice temari and origami, in order to learn designs and shapes with which she is unfamiliar.
To begin a temari piece, Law first makes a ball by wrapping approximately one cup of rice hulls in newspaper. The ball is covered with cotton, then carefully wrapped with sewing thread until a symmetrical sphere is formed. Next, she precisely divides the sphere into equal parts, without the use of a tape measure. She wraps a strip of paper around the middle of the sphere, folds the paper in half, places the folded paper back on the sphere and then sticks a pin into the sphere to mark the mid-point. Law continues the folding and marking process until the sphere is divided into as many as 32 equal parts. She then proceeds with the wrapping and lacing of the ball with thread to make her design.
Law says the most important point in constructing origami figures is to make the paper folds tight and precise. She prefers Japanese rice paper, because its strength allows her to create complex figures from a single sheet, without using glue or making any cuts. Many of the objects she constructs are symbolic. A crane, for instance, symbolizes long life. "A crane lives 1,000 years; a turtle, 10,000," she explains.
Today Law freely shares her skills and knowledge of traditional culture with members of Japanese communities in West and North Florida, as well as with her own children and grandchildren. Passing this valued information on to others gives her some assurance that the art forms will continue in her new homeland.