Paper strong enough to be light — 1,300 years of hand-couched mulberry sheets from the clear water of Mino, Gifu.
Along the Nagara river, paper has been made by hand for some thirteen hundred years. Honminoshi — the finest grade — is couched sheet by sheet from clean kozo mulberry fibre and the cold local water, and is strong enough to last a thousand years while still passing light.
Made to let light through
It is the paper of shōji screens and lanterns: thin, even, and quietly luminous. UNESCO lists the technique among humanity's intangible heritage.
See & touch
In Mino's old merchant street, where the houses wear their fireproof udatsu gables, paper shops and workshops line the way; at the Mino Washi Museum you can watch sheets couched and try it yourself. Each October the street glows with the Mino Washi Lantern Art exhibition.
Where to buy
Shoji paper, lanterns, stationery, ceremonial envelopes — washi turns up in the museum shop and the town's stores. (We sell nothing here; this is only where the paper lives.)
