# Where furoshiki comes from

風呂敷

Nara period (710–794) onward; name from Muromachi-era bathhouses

Fabric wrappers for storing and carrying things go back to the Nara period: the Shōsōin treasury keeps wrappers (tsutsumi) made for court-dance costumes, and by the Heian period a plain wrapper was called hira-zutsumi. The name furoshiki, 'bath spread', is linked to the Muromachi period, when guests at the shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu's bath hall are said to have wrapped their clothes in fabric squares marked with family crests and stood on them to dress. In the Edo period public bathhouses spread, townspeople carried their bath things in the furoshiki, and merchants and travellers used it to carry goods, so the bathhouse name spread across Japan. After Meiji, Western bags and then postwar paper and plastic shopping bags pushed furoshiki out of everyday use. In 2006 Environment Minister Yuriko Koike promoted a 'Mottainai Furoshiki', made from recycled PET bottles with an Itō Jakuchū bird-and-flower design, as a reusable alternative to plastic bags.

Furoshiki are still used for formal gifts (the knotless flat wrap is the politest), and are now promoted as an eco-friendly, reusable wrap and bag.

Furoshiki sizes are counted in haba (幅, also written 巾), the width of a bolt of kimono fabric (tanmono). One haba is about 34 cm by 37 cm, nine sun on the kujira-jaku ruler used for fabric, and furoshiki were sewn from bolt widths with little waste, so traditional furoshiki are slightly longer than wide. Sizes are named by how many widths they span: chūhaba (about 45 cm), futahaba (two widths, about 68 cm), nishaku-haba (two shaku, about 75 cm), nishi-haba (about 90 cm), mihaba (three widths, about 105 cm), yohaba (four, about 128 cm), and the large itsuhaba, muhaba and nanahaba. A whole bolt cut into five and sewn together made an ittan-furoshiki (six widths), roughly two tatami mats, the largest traditional size.

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Source: https://www.furoshiki.com/history/