For thirteen centuries, Japanese artisans have pulled paper from tree bark and freezing river water — paper fine enough to restore the masterpieces of the Louvre and the Vatican. The makers are now disappearing. This is a multilingual record of every region that remains.
Washi is made from the bark of kozo, mitsumata and ganpi — pulled sheet by sheet in the cold water of winter, from nothing but plants, water and human hands. The soft light through a shoji screen, the strength that lasts a thousand years: all of it is handmade. But the masters are aging, successors are few, and the farmers who grow the raw bark are vanishing. Workshops close quietly, one by one, before anyone records them.
WASHI MAP is a digital breakwater. We map every papermaking region — its history, its craft, and how close it stands to disappearing — in the world's languages, so that attention and support arrive while there is still someone left to receive them.
Workshop counts, then and now. The figures are provisional estimates, verified region by region as the archive grows.
Select a paper to locate its region on the map below.
Your contribution funds the research, translation and photography that document every washi region for the world. It is not a donation to any single workshop — it is what keeps this archive alive and growing.
Instead of buying us a coffee, buy the archive one sheet of paper. Every sheet moves the research and translation one step forward.
Support onceSustain the archive month by month. Your name joins the Circle on this site, and each month we send a letter from the papermaking regions you help protect.
Join the CircleStand behind the archive for a full year. You receive a certificate on real handmade washi, and your name is inscribed among the Guardians of this map.
Become a GuardianContributions support the operation of this multilingual archive — research, translation, photography and hosting. WASHI MAP is an independent cultural media project and is not a fundraising intermediary for any workshop or organization.
WASHI MAP is planned and operated by Suzukino Kikaku. Its founder was born in Mino, Gifu. His elementary-school diploma was written on washi he had pulled with his own hands. His summer-holiday craft project was "akari art" — Mino's own art form of paper and light. And yet, only as an adult did he learn that his hometown's paper had served as the official paper of the Edo shogunate, that it became the basis of the B-series paper sizes still defined in Japan's industrial standards (JIS) today, and that it had been named a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. This map began as his apology: to keep telling the world about the paper he once took for granted, so that it outlives us all. A self-appointed mission, gladly carried.
Are you a papermaker, a regional preservation society, or a researcher? We would be honored to hear from you — corrections, materials, and requests for coverage are all welcome. The archive grows one conversation at a time.
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