■仕様 サイズ：A-5版（A-4版 ２つ折りリーフレット 単色）
■定価 １０部 ８００円
Japanese traditional wisdom will protect the earth
A Traditional Japanese Cloth to Achieve the 3Rs
|A furoshiki is an oversized square cloth, dyed in one of any number of colors and patterns, used for carrying and storing things, as well as for wrapping gifts, spreading on the floor, or even decorating a room.
The word furoshiki, literally meaning "bath spread," dates from the mid-Edo Period (1603-1868). Furoshiki were first used at public bathhouses - then a social center for the common people - as a wrap to hold the bather's clothes. Gradually, it came to be used as a wrap for carrying a change of clothes and toiletries. The use of furoshiki as a way to carry things spread quickly as commerce became more active and people moved around more for both commerce and pleasure.
Furoshiki were used during weddings as well. From the mid-Edo Period until the mid-Showa Period (1926-1989), the parents of the bride would often prepare furoshiki with patterns such as cranes, other symbolic birds, fans, pine trees and waves, as they were all believed to usher in happiness and fortune.
After furoshiki gained greater popularity in the Edo Period, people came up with various ways to wrap things and handed the tradition down through generations until it became an indispensable tool for the life of the Japanese. However, the custom and culture of using furoshiki faded away in about 1975, the mid-Showa Period. It is just a very recent trend to revive the use of furoshiki as movements to conserve the environment and re-evaluation of Japanese traditional culture have become more prominent. A number of new and innovative uses of furoshiki have been proposed on top of its conventional techniques. The furoshiki is becoming more and more versatile, being used, for example, as a gift wrapper or as a table covering or other interior decoration.
An important feature of furoshiki is that it is always reused. One would never throw away a furoshiki. Using furoshiki will thus reduce the use of raw materials to create packaging and decrease the use of excessive packaging, and thus contribute to saving resources and energy. The furoshiki itself symbolizes a kind of circulation - people wrap things with a furoshiki, tie the ends of the cloth and make a knot which differs depending on the furoshiki's current role, but once the knot is untied and the cloth is spread, the original form of the furoshiki - a simple cloth - comes back.
A lifestyle based on the 3Rs (the reduction, reuse and recycling of waste) plays an important role as one of the measures to conserve the environment, and this lifestyle is truly necessary today. It may be a time for the Japanese traditional cloth, the furoshiki, to flourish again.