Shoji Paper, Japanese Rice Paper

There are a variety of papers available now and any translucent rice paper can be used for your shoji screens. Other uses for the papers are in general terms rice paper crafts, and rice paper curtains.

Rice paper is long lasting and no backing material is needed. But be careful, because shoji is paper screen, and paper may be torn. Japanese usually reinstall shoji paper at least once every year. To remove old shoji paper, moisten glued area with water and wait a small amount of time before wiping it clean. Stay away from using wallpaper stripper as it may strip the finish off shoji. You can use wallpaper glue for shoji paper, but home-produced rice paste is better regarding staining.

If you really want to have nice shoji think about putting your shoji paper on in flat strips, instead of putting it on as one big portion. (Any way, it is hard if you have any kids or cats at home!). Your wooden shoji frame should have 6 straight rows of blocks. Instead of sticking on one large portion of paper on the back which all has to be taken off and redone a year from now, stick on the paper in 6 parallel strips. Perhaps in a year's time you can get away with redoing only, say, three of the rows, rather than the whole thing. And always buy what you want. For example, if you have smaller holes, then you can buy little flower shaped "patches". Or you can scratch your own "patches" out of origami paper and glue them on, and allow yourself or others to try the creative input!

Shoji paper is beautifully made by expert artificers and produced mostly in Asia. Each Shoji is crafted from hard wood with your choice of well-built fiberglass white 'rice paper' backing, bamboo or cane. They are usually double hinged to allocate flexibility as an unconnected room / space divider. They should be carefully shipped in non-breakable boxes, with a faux 'crate' fixed firmly with full sized fiber board panels, so that they will arrive securely right to your home! Shoji paper is oversized and multiple sliding door sets should be carefully shipped by truck.

The single sided shoji paper are the most economical, solid wood room dividers with handset carpentry lattice that we can see on one side, against a powerful fiberglass, crack resistant and light permeable. The wood is usually nice to see. These have folded hinges so that you can arrange your screen in a variety of positions. There are economical single sided shoji papers that are great for those on a budget, or for unimportant areas. More formal areas may be better matched with the higher end figures. Note that some designs have a solid panel bottom kickboard, which creates better stability, and puncture fighting- great for households with kids and pets!

An Oiled Rice Paper Umbrella, Japan

If shopping for shoji paper, you will see that some is made from a special reinforced shoji paper called Warlon, or Taf Top which is a special type of reinforced shoji paper that is about 5 times hardier than the standard fiberglass shoji paper. It has a reinforced layer to avoid deflates, but yet still pass light from side to side. It is not resistant to breakage however, as no shoji paper is. Some Chinese fabricates do offer non-traditional plastic shoji, but some feel that this detracts from the yielding, genuine Japanese feel, and do not propose plastic.