The folding fan is recognized as being invented in Japan or China with both countries holding legends of ite screation. In Japan the fan is thought to be modelled after the folding wings of a bat, while the Chinese believe the sight of a woman fanning her face mask at a festival led to the tool’s creation. But the most endorsed history of the folding fan is that in pre-modern Japan (552–784), before the invention of paper, aristocrats, bureaucrats, and rulers used portable strips of wood called mokkan as notebooks. Rivets were attached at their base binding the strips together into expandable, fan-like, readable and portable collections. At some point these developed into foldable wooden fans.
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