What is furoshiki (風呂敷) you ask and what does it have to do with our family?
Furoshiki is most simply described as a square piece of fabric. It can be any size, but is commercially available at 19″x19″ or 27″x27″. It can be personalized and uniquely yours, which is apart of it’s original utility. This cloth was identifiable as yours, with a pattern, color, or family crest. You can see above a few books being wrapped to carry.
Rather than borrow the description from Wikipedia or online, I am putting this description I received when I first purchased a few of my Furoshiki in Japan in 2013.
Neat Jed, it makes a bag. We have bags, I get them free from stores when I buy groceries (although that may soon be going away).
It is so much more than that, and you may need to think about this really hard, but it’s actually, and deeply, a “Japanese carrying device”.
Or put a different way, it is a Japanese vessel for carrying things. What kinds of things? Well, all sorts! See the following instructions and do some quick googling, there are plenty of examples and a variety of ways.
So the Irwin family is useful for carrying things around? Well yes, but more importantly, we are seeking a way to bring Christ to the Japanese people in a package that they can relate to that looks intrinsically Japanese. We want them to put God in to their lives, to hide His Word in their hearts (Psalm 119:11), and we don’t want them to change looking, acting and being Japanese. We, the people God created, look very different; coming from many different backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities, but we are His people. He wants us to be the best version of ourselves, and who better to know how to guide and mold us, than the very God that created us!
We are going to be leaving the comfortable box of Western Christianity to enter into a different cultures’ lives, and we want to be culturally relevant. I’ve been reading a lot on the differences of the Eastern mentality, the Japanese culture, Shinto, Buddhism, and hearing the warnings about how hard it is to share the gospel in Japan. From these readings, and other missionaries sharing with me, I think the gospel in Japan isn’t gaining traction because we are trying to bring them Western Christianity. We are trying to take them out of their norm, set them in a pew with a Bible and a hymnal, and say this is how it’s done while you are in our church building.
I want you to notice, that in all of these pictures, the generous people that are teaching and sharing with me are kneeling on the floor. It is a part of their every day culture. Remove your shoes when you go in, keep the outside dirt outside. I ate many meals kneeling and sitting. I remember about halfway through my first trip there 5 years ago, about 2 weeks in, we were provided forks to eat with, and it felt so odd and strange, because we had been using chopsticks for every meal for 2 weeks. It’s out of the norm, its counter cultural to do things the Western way there. Japanese are proud to be Japanese. Just like it would be weird and uncomfortable to remove all the chairs from your church and force you to sit or kneel on the floor. Then every where you go out from there, and everything else you do, you sit in chairs to eat, and work, and enjoy Netflix.
The provider of the instructions, and showing us how to fold the Furoshikiya is still in business. It is in Japanese, but the beautiful pictures of Furoshiki are easy enough to understand. Click on her picture and you can see the awesome variety of Furoshiki that she has. And you’ll also notice, she has chosen a picture of her kneeling in traditional clothes.
Her website is here: Furoshikiya
Furoshiki Family 