How can I make a koyori?

A koyori is needed to hold together the bundles of paper that will become a book. The diverse types of washi each have their own characteristics, and at times washi can be used like a wire.

Let’s look at how koyori (paper strings) for binding fukurotojihon are made. In particular, let’s see how the inner binding of an old book is made with a koyori. Sekishu hanshi paper is used for the koyori in the video below.

How to display subtitles

Subtitles in the video below describe the work at each step. To view the explanation, turn ON video subtitles.

^{To enable the subtitles, please hover over the speech bubble icon in the video player, and choose English or Japanese. You can also select Subtitles off here to disable it.
You can change subtitle’s font size by changing the browser’s font size.}

If you can obtain hanshi — paper used for practicing penmanship and calligraphy — try making a koyori yourself with the method shown in the video. This will give you a sense of its toughness.

Share your koyori

You can share your work on a collaborative visual board called Padlet. Padlet allows you to share texts, images, audio, video, and some other types of files (such as pdf) by simply pasting them on a shared online board.

First, access our visual sharing site, Padlet board, here.

Then, all you need is to click the “+” button located at the lower right corner of the page and choose/type what you would like to share with other learners.

If you managed to take a photo of your work (koyori), attach the photo along with your story.

This guide may be helpful if you are not familiar with this type of tool. You can also look up Padlet tutorials too.