The doorbell chimed as the carpenter arrived. After removing his shoes, he stepped up from the stone-floored genkan (玄関) to the wooden hallway. I led him through the kitchen to my bedroom, the only remaining tatami room in the house. Once inside, he examined the three sliding screens covering the glass doors that opened from my room to the front of the house. Their light wooden frames, enclosing delicate latticework layered with translucent white paper, softened the pale light as it filtered through the room. 

Grasping the first screen with both hands and lifting slightly, the carpenter pulled from the bottom with minimal effort, and the screen slid free. This was my first lesson in shōji (障子): for sliding installations, the only thing holding them in place is the grooves in the top and bottom tracks, rabbeted to form ridges that guide and secure the screens. This method depends on a precise fit to ensure smooth sliding. In no time, the carpenter had detached all three screens, loaded them cheerfully into his compact Daihatsu kei van, and promised to return with them in two days.

A few weeks earlier, I moved into a roku-jō (六畳) room—a six-tatami mat-sized space in a 1960s family residence. The house, combining traditional elements with mid-century prefabrication, had been a family home for years before being converted into a shared house. Despite its location on the ground floor, next to the kitchen, I chose this room over the more modern ones upstairs, drawn by its tatami mats and shōji screens.

After settling in, one of the first things I noticed was the paper on my room’s shōji screens, which seemed to bear the marks of many years of use. It was creased, discoloured, and dotted with small holes and tears. Having wanted to live with shōji screens for some time, I was eager to see them in pristine condition, so I requested a repair through my landlord. While some people tackle shōji paper repair as a DIY project, professional assistance is the safest option in a rental context. Watching a seasoned daiku (大工), or carpenter, remove the screens so effortlessly piqued my interest in the repair process.