■ What's shoji screen?

In traditional Japanese architecture, a shoji is a door, window or room divider consisting of translucent paper over a frame of wood which holds together a sort of grid of wood or bamboo.

While washi is the traditional paper, shoji may be made of paper made by modern manufacturing processes; plastic is also in use.

Shoji doors are often designed to slide open, and thus conserve space that would be required by a swinging door.

They are used in traditional houses as well as Western-style housing, especially in the washitsu (Japanese-style room).

In modern construction, the shoji does not form the exterior surface of the building; it sits inside a sliding glass door or window.

Although the word shoji formerly also applied to the opaque fusuma, the two are now distinct.