Many of us take what were once luxuries for granted – clean water from our taps, a warm bed or a hot meal, for example. So it may not cross our minds what a luxury commodity paper was only a few ...

Small-scale workshops making washi by hand could once be found all over Japan. But the arrival of modern machinery as the country opened to the West in the late nineteenth century led to a rapid ...

Every summer, giant warriors roam the Japanese city of Aomori. Lit from within by lanterns, these formidable paper floats are the centerpiece of the Nebuta Matsuri, a weeklong evening festival in ...