A Japanese Introducing Origami Therapy in New York

Art Therapist, KOBAYASHI Toshiko

Many of us are filled to capacity with material possessions, facing an onslaught of electronic information, and coping with the dangers of terrorism — we are in a society filled with stress, and many people are seeking help — through therapy — for healing. In Japan, some of the more well known therapies include aromatherapy, foot therapy or yoga therapy. But if you turn to therapy in Western countries, you may well also find art therapy, which is known generally as practical therapy that is applied in psychiatric treatments.

KOBAYASHI Toshiko, who works at the Bronx Psychiatric Center in New York as an art therapist, came to the United States in 1999 and obtained a Master’s degree in art therapy from New York University. At the time, she was 54 years old. She has been living in New York and working as an art therapist since.

Kobayashi works in teams, sharing patients’ information with other doctors, in order to provide total treatments. “Many patients have suffered from experiences of rape, and are coping with emotional damage or mental trauma suffered when they were children. In the worst cases, people are just unable to speak,” says Kobayashi about the psychiatric treatment situations she faces.

“I have loved creating, for example, drawing, origami, calligraphy and pottery since I was a child,” she says. During the busy time when she was raising her children, Kobayashi found opportunities and held recycled art exhibitions consisting of objects she had recreated from items that had been thrown away. Always having had an interest in art for a long time, Kobayashi developed a unique approach to treatment using origami, called “Enrichment Origami Art Therapy.”

Kobayashi teaches the basics of how to fold paper, and encourages patients to fold paper in their own unique ways. She says, “You see your own creation in front of you. Realizing its existence makes you aware of your own existence. It also makes you aware of the reality.” Kobayashi says the resulting excitement will be greater if you can create something that is linked emotionally to yourself.

Kobayashi also works for various art programs including at after school art therapy programs (children attending these classes often have working parents), at the high school adjacent to the ruins of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and also for children from low income families living in the lower east side of the city.

“I felt so happy when a mother of my patient, a young man who had gone through delinquency, expressed her gratitude,” Kobayashi recalls. “The mother said her son folded a piece of paper and made a box for us. For the first time he made something useful for the family.” But while some of the patients may not like to make things, Kobayashi says, “I just let them feel free and wait until they start moving by themselves.”

Going Through Divorce, and Became an Art Therapist in Her 50s
Kobayashi says that the path she took to get to where she is now was not so smooth. While she was a housewife, she was active for volunteer work as a medical coordinator and busy with producing artistic creations, Kobayashi began to feel a strong urge to have her own job and become independent. After her children had grown up she decided to divorce, and started a new life.

During this time, as an artist she was engaged in art exhibition planning and workshops. She received a request, from the Red Crescent, which knew her activities, to hold a range of rehabilitation programs for physically and emotionally affected children and young people in the war-torn region of Palestine. Kobayashi took the job and visited Palestine several times.

Kobayashi has met a great many people through art during her numerous visits abroad. She has come to realize the huge influence that making artistic creations can have on people. On one occasion, she visited her daughter who was studying in New York. While there, Kobayashi learnt that she could study to apply art for medical care, so she made a decision to move to the city to study. Her daughter returned to Japan a while later, but Kobayashi stayed in New York.

She remembers the time and said, “I had a hard time making the decision to move, feeling afraid about whether I could actually do it, and I had so much to think about including family and household issues.” Now, Kobayashi is leading a fulfilled life going back and forth between her apartment in Manhattan and the Center in Bronx.

The healing effect of art therapy lies in the process of making artistic creations. Kobayashi says, “Art therapy is a medical practice that can be used to discover inner problems that cannot be verbalized.” A psychiatric therapy such as art therapy is in great demand in a large city like New York. In modern Japan, mental health treatments are being discussed and in future, art therapists will be given more and more opportunities to be active in Japan.

Kobayashi’s website
www.imagefactoryt.com/

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