Google Doodle: Akira Yoshizawa's 101st birthday

For the 101st birth anniversary of origami grandmaster Akira Yoshizawa, Google has posted a paper folding doodle on its homepage.

Japanese artist Akira Yoshizawa (born March 14, 1911; died March 14, 2005) revived the ancient Japanese art of paper folding called origami. It was though Yoshizawa's efforts that the art became an international rage.

Because of his worldwide popularity Yoshizawa also served as a cultural ambassador of Japan and was honoured with Japan's Order of the Rising Sun in 1983.

The origami doodle on the Google homepage is a work by Robert J Lang, one of the world's leading origami artists.

Lang's tribute to Yoshizawa transforms the Google logo into a garden complete with butterflies in different colours. The butterfly design that Lang used in the doodle is the one that Yoshizawa popularised. This butterfly is also the symbol of the International Origami Friendship Society of Tokyo.

The Google doodle commemorating Akira Yoshizawa's 101st birthday is, according to our calculations, the 1327th Google doodle since the first ever on for the Burning Man Festival back on August 30, 1998.