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Hiroshima City to start deliberations on proposed Paper Crane Museum

by Kanako Noda, Staff Writer

For the first time, the City of Hiroshima has included the related expenses for deliberations on the development of the proposed Paper Crane Museum (a tentative name) in the initial budget for fiscal year 2010. The museum, if realized, will exhibit and preserve, for a long period of time, the paper cranes that the city receives from both Japan and overseas. Establishing the museum is one of the campaign pledges made by Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, but inside the city council there has been stubborn opposition to the very idea of preserving paper cranes.

The idea is that paper cranes will be preserved for 20 to 30 years at the museum. The city will set up a deliberations committee consisting of outside experts within fiscal year 2010 to flesh out the proposal. The committee will discuss various aspects of the museum, such as its scale, location, and means of displaying the cranes. The city has allocated roughly 0.9 million yen for the related expenses. Mayor Akiba once said that the museum would be akin to Tokyo Dome, suggesting a large-scale facility.

The city receives an average of more than 10 million paper cranes (about 10 tons) per year from throughout the world. A large number of cranes also come from school children who fold paper cranes as part of their peace education activities. Until March 2002, cranes were incinerated, but since then they have been preserved in the city's several unused facilities after first being offered to the Children's Peace Monument in Peace Memorial Park. At one of those locations, the former Hiroshima Municipal Baseball Stadium, roughly 16 million paper cranes have been exhibited to the public.

Paper Crane Hall (a tentative name), part of the city's utilization plan for the former baseball stadium, is a different facility from the museum. Paper Crane Hall, where cranes would be exhibited but not preserved, would serve as a venue for such activities as music and art programs.

The city council has been strongly opposed to the idea of constructing the hall, arguing that the need for such a facility is low when the Children's Peace Monument already exists. Thus, it is unclear whether the council will support the plan to establish the Paper Crane Museum, which would be an even larger facility than the hall.

Kazuaki Oku, director of the A-bomb Experience Preservation Division, explained, "We would like people to grasp the enormity of children's sentiments through the large, physical presence of the paper cranes they have folded with wishes for peace."

(Originally published on March 10, 2010)

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