Bhubaneswar: Consul General of Japan Ishikawa Yoshihisa inaugurated the Festival of Japan at the Bakul Library in Bhubaneswar on Saturday.
The Consul General declared the festival open in a very unique and appropriate way, when he was asked to open a folded paper fan, that on opening read, “Festival of Japan @Bakul”. He said it was his first visit to Odisha and having heard about Bakul Foundation’s initiatives to promote understanding of Japan among people in Bhubaneswar, he had been keen to visit Bakul on his first visit to the state.
He and his colleagues Megumi Shimada and Gautam Dey also participated actively in the Origami workshop. The Consul General added, “I had little exposure to Origami, and I really learnt something new about my own culture through Origami and really enjoyed the event. I look forward to coming back to Bakul on my next visit”.
Sujit Mahapatra, the founder of Bakul Foundation explained that Bakul had always promoted multicultural exposure at the library, by collecting children’s books and folktales from different countries, through storytelling events at the library like Storytelling from Around the world and the online storytelling series during Covid, in which the viewers were taken to 50 different countries in the course of a year with the best oral storytellers from those countries. Bakul had earlier hosted Festivals of Italy, Spain and France.
The Festival of Japan also reading of Japanese Tales and includes a curated collection of books from Japan for readers of all ages popular Japanese folk tales and picture books for small children like the Peach Boy to Japanese Manga like Akira by Katsumiro Otomo and the Buddha series by Osamu Tezuka, famous writers like Murakami and Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese Haiku poetry and books on management like the Art of Japanese Management and on Toyota Story.
The facilitator of the Origami workshop, Santrupthy Das, an architect turned professional Origami artist had earlier prepared folded paper fans for the Japanese Society in New York. She explained how Origami gave a wonderful glimpse into Japanese culture of compactness and innovation. She made everyone make different forms by folding paper. For instance, young and old participants folded 3 different pieces of coloured paper in slightly different ways to make a spinning toy, which was a surprise revealed after the three different pieces of paper were put together to become the toy and they were amazed and thrilled. The second activity emphasised on the community engagement with origami in which each participant made patterns on white paper.
Because of the popularity of Doraemon and other characters from Japanese anime, probably the most well-known cultural export of Japan, The Festival also features an Anime Cosplay Workshop on Sunday morning by the team that organizes ANIMETRO, Odisha’s only anime (Japanese animation) event. The Cosplay (Costume Play) workshop is designed for Anime fans, who love to dress up as their favourite characters, and the facilitators will teach the fans how to create stunning costumes from prop making to wig styling to make their favourite characters come to life.
On Sunday evening, there is also a Kamishibai Storytelling by Ankita Pattanaik and Bidyut Lata from KIIT International School. Kamishibai is a traditional Japanese form of storytelling which means paper theatre as the storyteller carries a small wooden stage to present a series of illustrated cards, which are revealed as the story unfolds.