Paper crane

折鶴 orizuru

The folded crane carries the crane's meaning of longevity; a thousand of them (senbazuru) are a wish for recovery and peace.

Edo period paper folding (late 17th century)

Because the crane was holy and long-lived, people offered paper cranes and crane pictures at shrines and temples. Books referring to paper cranes and to 'a thousand cranes' appear from the late 17th century, as paper folding spread in the Edo period. After the war the story of Sadako Sasaki, a Hiroshima girl who folded cranes while ill with leukemia (died 1955), made strings of a thousand cranes a world symbol of peace.

Senbazuru are given to the sick, to teams and to couples, and left at the Children's Peace Monument in Hiroshima.