The word 'Furoshiki', literally meaning "bath pread,"
dates from the mid-Edo Period.  
Furoshiki were first used at public bathhouses -
then a social center for the common people -
as a wrap to hold the bather's clothes.

Gradually, it came to be used as a wrap for
carrying a change of clothes and toiletries.

The use of Furoshiki as a way to carry things
spread quickly as commerce became more active
and people moved around more for both commerce and pleasure.

Furoshiki were used during weddings as well.
From the mid-Edo Period until the mid-Showa Period (1926-1989),
the parents of the bride would often prepare Furoshiki with
patterns such as cranes, other symbolic birds, fans, pine trees
and waves, as they were all believed to usher in happiness
and fortune.

After Furoshiki gained greater popularity in the Edo Period,
people came up with various ways to wrap things and handed the
tradition down through generations until it became an
indispensable tool for the life of the Japanese.

However, the custom and culture of using Furoshiki faded away
in about 1975, the mid-Showa Period.
It is just a very recent trend to revive the use of Furoshiki as
movements to conserve the environment and re-evaluation of
Japanese traditional culture have become more prominent.
A number of new and innovative uses of Furoshiki have been
proposed on top of its conventional techniques.
The Furoshiki is becoming more and more versatile, being used,
for example, as a gift wrapper or as a table covering or
other interior decoration.

An important feature of Furoshiki is that it is always reused.
One would never throw away a Furoshiki.  Using Furoshiki will
thus reduce the use of raw materials to create packaging and
decrease the use of excessive packaging, and thus contribute
to saving resources and energy.
The Furoshiki itself symbolizes a kind of circulation -
people wrap things with a Furoshiki, tie the ends of the cloth
and make a knot which differs depending on the Furoshiki's
current role, but once the knot is untied and the cloth is spread,
the original form of the Furoshiki - a simple cloth - comes back.

A lifestyle based on the 3Rs
(reduce, reuse and recycle: in Japanese, 'Mottainai')
plays an important role as one of the measures to conserve the
environment, and this lifestyle is truly necessary today.
It may be a time for the Japanese traditional cloth, the Furoshiki,
to flourish again. 
(Furoshiki data from 'Furoshiki Study Group' Web-site)

If you look for a nice Froshiki, try MUSUBI Furoshiki Shop in
Shibuya, Tokyo. 
Their head office is Kyoto and have a large variety of
traditional Japanese color and design Furoshiki.

MUSUBI
Address: 2-31-8, Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
(7 min. walk from Meiji Jingumae Stn. Exit 5, or
 9 min. walk from JR Harajuku Stn. Takeshita-guchi Exit)
Tel: 03-5414-5678 (Japanese Only)
Open Hours: 11:00~20:00 Mon. - Fri.
                        11:00~19:00 Sat., Sun., & public holidays