Kite Museum – Japanese

Another interesting display at the World Kite Museum in Long Beach, Washington which I visited on Monday was the section devoted to Japanese, and other oriental kite-makers.  These were very elaborate and colorful in design, and often quite large.

This one was probably 8 or 9 feet tall:

And this one was even bigger, filling a whole window on the second floor of the museum:

This wasn’t as big, but still elaborate:

This was one of the largest kites on display – probably 8 feet tall and with a huge wingspan:

And it was three-dimensional, with the body and talons protruding below it:

There were some very small kits on display as well.  I included the index finger of my left hand touching the glass display case to illustrate how tiny this kite is:

And here is another tiny kite.  Please ignore my big feet which I didn’t realize were reflecting in the glass of the display case, and weren’t included to illustrate anything!

Then there was the “Monkey King” kite, which has a fictional story behind it:

And finally a Dragon kite, with this large, elaborate set of three heads – connected by bamboo:

Parts of these heads were plastic (teeth and eyes, specifically) but the remainder was bamboo sticks over which colorful silk was spread and other adornments attached.  Dragon heads are supposedly designed to include parts of 9 different animals.

But wait – there’s more…..

This Dragon kite is actually called a “centipede” kite in that a very long tail of long bamboo sticks with thin, lightweight material designed to catch the wind and extend the tail behind the heads.  The picture doesn’t do it justice but this centipede tail would VERY long when fully extended.