The paper band on a Japanese gift, and the knot that says why

At the gift counter of a Japanese department store, your box is already wrapped when the clerk asks the question. They hold a sheet of white paper printed with a red-and-white knot, pen ready, and ask whether you would like noshi, and if so, inside or outside. Most visitors say yes to be polite and nod through the rest. The sheet that goes on the box then speaks for you. It uses a vocabulary of knots, colours and two or three characters, and your host will read it before they open anything.

The question at the counter

The paper is called noshi-gami (熨斗紙), and in everyday speech people shorten the whole arrangement to noshi. You meet it at the gift counters of the depachika (デパ地下), the basement food halls under department stores, and at old confectioners such as Toraya (とらや). There a boxed bar of yōkan (羊羹), a dense sweet bean jelly, is a standard formal present. Staff ask because the paper is not decoration. It states the occasion, and the wrong one is a mistake that tends to be noticed quietly and never mentioned.

熨斗はおかけしますか、それとも包装だけでよろしいですか。

That is roughly what you will hear: noshi wa okake shimasu ka, soretomo hōsō dake de yoroshii desu ka — shall we put noshi on it, or just the wrapping. A plain hai is enough to go on. The clerk will then ask what the gift is for, and that answer decides everything printed on the sheet, from the knot to the words above it.

What the knot is saying

The printed cords are a picture of mizuhiki (水引), thin cords of twisted, stiffened paper that were once tied by hand around every formal gift. The knot is the grammar. A chōmusubi (蝶結び), a simple bow, can be untied and tied again, so it marks things people are glad to see happen more than once: a birth, a new house, a seasonal thank-you, thanks to a host who put you up. A musubikiri (結び切り) is tied off hard and cannot be undone. It belongs to events meant to happen only once. Weddings are one side of that, and on the other side are illness and condolence.

A third form, the awaji musubi (あわじ結び), loops back into itself like a pretzel and is used much like musubikiri, especially on wedding envelopes. Colour carries the rest of the message. Red and white, kōhaku (紅白), is celebration. Black and white is for condolence, and in parts of the Kansai region you will also see yellow and white for that purpose. The number of strands is odd by custom. Five is the everyday count, and wedding knots are often doubled to ten.

The small folded shape in the corner

The noshi itself is the narrow, hexagonal fold printed in the upper right of the sheet, with a thin yellow strip down its centre. It stands in for noshi-awabi (熨斗鮑), abalone sliced into long ribbons, stretched and dried, which once went with gifts as an offering of preserved food and a wish for long life. Today it is almost always printed, and few people under fifty could tell you what the yellow strip used to be.

Because the noshi stands for something from the sea, it is left off when the gift is itself fish or meat. A clerk at a dried-fish or wagyu counter in the depachika may hand you paper with the knot but no fold in the corner. It is also left off condolence paper, where the decorative part would be out of place. You do not need to remember these exceptions. The staff know them. What you bring is the occasion, said plainly.

Inside or outside, and the words on top

Uchi-noshi (内のし) puts the paper under the wrapping, and soto-noshi (外のし) puts it over. A common rule of thumb is that gifts sent by courier get uchi-noshi so the paper arrives clean, and gifts handed over in person get soto-noshi so the purpose is visible at once. Families and regions differ, and some clerks will simply ask whether you are delivering it yourself. When you hand it over, take the box out of the store's paper bag. Many givers do this, and the bag goes home with you.

Above the knot sits the omotegaki (表書き), a few characters naming the occasion. 御礼 (orei) means thanks. 御祝 (oiwai) is congratulations. 内祝 (uchi-iwai) is a return gift that shares your own good news, such as one sent after receiving presents for a new baby. 粗品 (soshina), a modest gift, is used when greeting new neighbours. In summer and at year's end the counters fill with boxes marked 御中元 (ochūgen) and 御歳暮 (oseibo), the two seasonal thank-you gifts. Below the knot goes the giver's name, usually the family name alone. Ask whether the counter can print yours in katakana or Latin letters. Some will, and some will leave the space for you to write by hand.

Where the cords are still made by hand

Most of Japan's mizuhiki comes from Iida (飯田) in southern Nagano, a town where strips of washi paper have long been twisted into cord and stiffened for the gift trade. In Kanazawa (金沢), the Kaga mizuhiki (加賀水引) style goes further, shaping the cords into cranes, turtles and pine branches that sit on wedding envelopes like small sculptures. Tsuda Mizuhiki Orikata (津田水引折型), a long-running workshop in the city, shows how far a knot can be taken.

For something closer to everyday use, the stationers Kyūkyodō (鳩居堂), in Ginza and on Teramachi in Kyoto, sell shūgi-bukuro (祝儀袋), envelopes for gifts of money, with real cords rather than printed ones. Looking along a shelf of these is the quickest way to learn the system. The bows sit in one row, the tied-off knots in another, and the black-and-white condolence envelopes have a shelf of their own.

Getting the paper right on the day

The easiest place to try it is a large department store food hall. In Tokyo, Nihombashi Mitsukoshi (日本橋三越本店) is above Mitsukoshimae Station (三越前駅) on the Ginza and Hanzōmon lines. In Osaka, the Hankyu Umeda main store (阪急うめだ本店) is at Umeda. Wrapping and noshi are usually part of the service when you buy a gift there, but do not take that for granted. Stores generally will not wrap things bought elsewhere, and opening hours change by season, so check the store's own website or ask at the floor's service counter before you plan a gift run around it.

Go on a weekday morning if you can. In early summer and through December, gift floors open separate seasonal counters for ochūgen and oseibo, and the queues for wrapping grow long. A wrapped, papered box can take longer than you expect, so leave time before a train. The one mistake to avoid is treating the clerk's question as a yes or no about looking nice. Name the occasion in a word — orei for a thank-you to a host is the one most travellers need — and the paper will say the rest correctly.