Warazan ~ Knotted & Woven Characters from Japan’s Ryukyu Islands
For many years, the population of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands noted numerical values, calculation results, enumerations, and more with knotted cords from rice straw. Even after World War II, fishermen, moneylenders and simple merchant were observed working with these cords of rice straw.Warazan were used as a simple calculation tool for adding, subtracting, multiplying but also to generate invoices and supporting documents. Laborers fixed so their working results as well as crop yields. But the local administration used this Warazan for accountancy as well.The already complicated calculation of taxes to be paid in kind, such as rice or fabrics or in cash required documents and “Conversion tables”.Today this form of „writing“ is almost forgotten.




Prof. Kichuki from Japan supported us with further informations, images and especially with rice straw.
For me as an artist and weaver, the fascination of this strange characters is not so much in the importance of the individual nodes and strands. It is its complexity within the simplicity of the material wich makes them very enigmatic in a suptile way.
Mysterious signs from a foreign land.
~~by Hansgert Butterweck, a basket maker, designer, artist who lives in Beverungen, Germany
His website is: butterweck-geflecht.de