You’ve probably seen this very popular image in flickr–or maybe you haven’t, so here it is. “Rainbow of Peace” by jasohill (twitter), one of whose photos I have featured before in Bouncing Red Ball.
{You can see its 2048×1536-pixel splendor here.}
It is said that if you fold a thousand cranes, one of the mystical animals of Japan, you will be granted a wish. I don’t know if that’s really true but then again, I haven’t tried folding a thousand of these birds.
When a friend of mine left Japan after more than three years of study, his then Japanese girlfriend gave him a thousand folded cranes. One can only speculate about what she wished for because they eventually went their separate ways.
Anyway, probably one of the best things to wish for after folding a thousand paper cranes is world peace, which is what these cranes increasingly symbolize since they were prominently displayed in peace monuments and temples in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the only two sites in the world where atomic bombs were used in war time.
From jasohill:
I took this photo while hovering over a chain of paper cranes that were placed ever so gently on top of the ground zero memorial in Nagasaki. My goal was to get all the colors i could. I had never seen such a beautiful testament to peace.
I might try my origami skills on these birds sometime. Peace.
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