Japan, as a country with high aesthetic value cannot be separated from arts and crafts, and papercrafts!

What’s more interesting about it is that they even have their own product of paper for their paper arts and papercrafts. It’s called the washi paper? Have you seen one? Well I have but what I saw is just one kind of it since there are so many types of washi paper, different from one another.

Washi paper is the kind of handmade decorative paper used in so many things by the Japanese paper like producing origami works, Ukiyo-e, Shodo, Japanese paper dolls and even miniature sculptures as decoration which harden as the paper being lacquered. Interesting huh? Although mostly in the modern time there are machines working for man to produce it, handmade is still very well preferred. The technology on how to produced washi paper were adopted by the Japanese people from the chinese.

Believe it or not, but washi paper is tougher than normal paper made from the wood pulp. Why? The secret lies in which part of a tree is used to make it. Washi uses the fibers from the bark of a tree like famously known as sources for washi – Gampi tree, Mulberry trees and Mitsumata shrub. However, basically, you can use any plant in the production of washi paper. They are so many kinds of washi, named after the place or person who produced it widely. So you see, how unique it could be.

You can read more about washi paper and other Japan-related stuffs at JapanUptown.com