千羽鶴
(senbazuru)
千羽鶴 (senbazuru), is the practice of making 1,000 paper cranes in order to have a single wish come true. A traditional folkloric practice was popularized and brought to the rest of the world through the story of Sadako Sasaski. Who was a young girl that suffered radiation poisoning at age two after America’s nuclear bombing of her hometown, Hiroshima. When she eventually developed leukemia at age twelve, she remembered the senbazuru tale. With little other options available, she began to work on her origami. According to her brother, she finished her 1,000 cranes, and continued on, making about 1,300 in total. Sadako Sasaski died on October 25th, 1955, at the age of twelve. This story of tragedy, death, and attempting to overcome
a seemingly impossible task inspired this work heavily, and after the needless deaths of three students on February 13th at Michigan State University, school shootings and gun violence were consistently on my mind. With death totals of school shootings in the hundreds, along with little to nothing being done by lawmakers in the country to counteract this senseless violence, I ask what other options are available? What as a student attending in-person classes can I do to prevent this? I don’t know. Seemingly nothing. So, this is my response, a desperate wish and bitterly hopeful attempt to end the constant violence and the influx of avoidable death in the schools of “the greatest country in the world”.