Washi Paper
Introduction
Washi (和紙) is Japanese handmade paper, made from the inner bark of kōzo (paper mulberry), mitsumata and gampi rather than from wood pulp. The fibres are long, and the nagashizuki forming technique, in which the sheet is built up from repeated strokes across the mould with a mucilage from tororo-aoi root suspending the fibres, lays them in overlapping layers rather than in a mat.
In 2014 UNESCO inscribed washi on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, covering three regional traditions: Sekishu-banshi, Hon-minoshi and Hosokawa-shi.
A surface that lets things through
The fibre structure produces a material used specifically where a surface has to pass something through rather than stop it.
- Light. In shōji, washi transmits daylight while scattering it, so a room receives illumination without a visible source and without hard shadows. The light level tracks the sky outside all day with no control of any kind.
- Air. The sheet is permeable, which is why paper partitions work in a humid climate.
- Sound. A paper screen attenuates speech enough to give a sense of separation while remaining acoustically transparent to the household. Privacy is by convention rather than by construction, which is a social arrangement supported by a material choice.
Washi also fails gradually. A tear stops at a fibre boundary rather than running, a hole can be patched by wetting and feathering a new piece into the old, and conservators use it for exactly this reason when repairing books and prints.
A washi screen does not need to:
- Be switched on
- Be adjusted through the day
- Be replaced when damaged
- Be sealed to work
Just as a paper screen lights a room by letting the sky through, a well-chosen material does its work by what it permits rather than by what it blocks.
