This origami paper is part of the Meets Takegami series, made to show the possibilities of bamboo as paper.

The sheets depict fauna found in the satoyama landscape of human cultivated forest fringes. This landscape was once common when rural villages lived in sustainable symbiosis with their environments, but has become threatened by industrialisation, and by depopulation.

Untended bamboo plantations can overwhelm the satoyama, and hence all the more reason to make great paper.

The creatures and flora featured here include kitsune (foxes), mimizuku (eagle owls), takenoko (bamboo roots), usagi (rabbits), ōmurasaki (Japanese Emperor butterflies) and tanuki (racoon dogs).

The pack contains 15 sheets, with three each of five patterns. (*One of the patterns can be a fox or a bamboo root, depending on how it is folded).

Consulting the maker’s youtube channel helps if you get stuck while folding: https://www.youtube.com/@meetstakegami7286/

The sheets are 17.5cm x 17.5cm.

About Meets Takegami / Chuetsu Pulp

Meets Takegami is a bamboo project of the Chuetsu Pulp company. While beautiful and evocative, bamboo is fast growing and suffocating to some natural environments. Therefore there is a constant clearance need in certain regions of Japan, and a surfeit of a durable material that neither rots quickly, or is kind to the environment to burn. Experiments by Chuetsu at their Kagoshima mill found application of their advanced techniques could be used to make a fine, and highly sustainable paper. The result is Takegami which in Japanese means: bamboo paper.