Taro’s One Year to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics Event

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In origami there are events that happen all the time.  For example, in our origami studios there are classes nearly everyday.  But every so often there are events that are much more rare and unique.  The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are one of those events.  The summer games only happen every 4 years, but the summer games haven’t been in the origami nation since 1964.  This presents a unique opportunity for Taro’s Origami Studio and founder Taro Yaguchi, as many companies have come forth to ask for help spreading the uniquely Japanese art-form to the rest of the world.  Recently Taro’s worked with NBC the company that broadcasts the games in the United States of America to promote the games with origami as well.

But perhaps the most exciting project Taro’s has been able to work on was the recent “One Year to Go!” event held by the Olympic Channel itself in Tokyo, and seen above.  Taro Yaguchi, the origami master and founder of the studio, was asked to create and perform several folding demonstrations on live TV for the event and was then interviewed about it as well.  The project was the culmination of several weeks of work and planning on both sides, as Taro’s practiced folding the several models and also scouted out the location of the event too.  Here you can see a behind-the-scenes look at the practice sessions for the event.

After all the practice folding and prep work for the broadcast was finished, and with only one year to the start of the Olympics, the event was underway!  Here you can watch Taro being interviewed in English:

And here Taro was interviewed about origami in Japanese:

 

After the interviews were over Taro got to work folding his unique and custom origami models during the broadcast. You can see from the next picture that the paper used was quite large.  Taro also worked with the help of Tomako, one of the Japanese artists based in Japan.  Together, they helped create several models using the bar and clips apparatus he designed for public events.

And while Taro and Tomako were folding the models during the broadcast, several other Olympic specialists were interviewed and showed off impressive skills, like karate and fencing.

     

Once the final models were finished they were presented to the hosts for the event.  Here you can see Taro showing off his origami dog and tennis player.

There was also a brand new Instagram filter of Olympic rings glasses that was created for the event, so the hosts had a fun time placing them on the origami models.

Lastly here are some wonderful behind-the-scenes photos and Instagram posts of the entire crew and on-air talent from the broadcast.

 

 

 

 

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