It exists best in a kind of light the Japanese call ke, a soft, gentle light for intimate occasions. Just as a three-line haiku evokes a setting or a season, the placement of a rock and a pond in a Japanese garden recalls the universe. It is a short imaginative leap from the rock to a mountain, from the pond to the sea.
Origami is an art of economy.
To the Japanese sensibility, the success of a completed origami figure depends on the creator's eye for form, structure, and proportion. Over many generations, the Japanese developed and refined a small repertoire of models that are stylized and abstract, often involving cuts and painted or printed details. Since paper was still a rare and precious commodity, paperfolding was a diversion only the rich could afford. Samurai warriors exchanged gifts adorned with noshi, good-luck tokens of folded paper and strips of abalone or dried meat. Shinto noble men celebrated weddings with glasses of sake, rice wine, wrapped in male and female paper butterflies representing the bride and groom.