Kites have been flown in Japan for over one thousand years, and have a powerful historical and cultural resonance. But you don't have to be Japanese for kites' fiercely beautiful designs to catch at your heart. Kites, as aficionado Tsutomu Hiroi recounts, have an extraordinary capacity to enchant.
Japanese kites are famous the world over for their beauty and craftsmanship. Some incorporate designs so exquisite and so striking that they might as well be called works of art. Appropriately, I think, there is a museum in Japan devoted to kites. The Nihonbashi Kite Museum, located on the fifth floor of the Taimeiken restaurant in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, opened its doors to the public in November 1977. The museum is run by Taimeiken owner Shingo Modegi and features among other exhibits his own impressive collection of kites. Visitors to the museum will lean a great deal about the fascinating history of Japanese kites.
Kites first arrived in Japan from China during the Heian Period(794-1192). The Wamyo ruiju sho(c.934, a tenth century dictionary of Chinese characters) defines them thus: "Kami-tombi: Made of paper in the shape of a kite [as for the bird], which rides the wind and flies well ." (The character now used to write "kite" is composed of two elements meaning "wind" and "scrap of cloth," but pronounced tako the word clearly coined to play on the shape of the pre-modern kite: tako also means "octopus.")
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