Japanese Knot Etiquette

There is one way to tie the brocade bag of the tea jar when the latter is empty and another when it is full. Not only general ignorance of social customs but deadly insults may be communicated by the way a knot is tied, foreigners often making dreadful mistakes either through not knowing or from ignoring the niceties of knot etiquette. 

Tying Knots in Japan

It Is a Serious Art, as a Mistake May Mean no Insult

Like the arranging of flowers, the tying of knots has been carried to the point of a complex art by the Japanese. There is one way—one right way, that is—to knot the cord that confines a birthday or New Year's present. There is one way to tie the brocade bag of the tea jar when the latter is empty and another when it is full. Not only general ignorance of social customs but deadly insults may be communicated by the way a knot is tied, foreigners often making dreadful mistakes either through not knowing or from ignoring the niceties of knot etiquette. 

Hooks and eyes, buttons and buckles are unknown so far as Japanese dress is concerned. They do not have much to fasten, but what they do have, they fasten with cord. That is why they have carried the tying of cord so far. The Japanese have hundreds of ornamental knots, some of them so old that they antedate written history. 

Japanese children are taught to make knots just as they are taught to write and draw. All sorts of flower and animal forms are copied. There is the chrysanthemum knot, the iris knot, plum blossom, pine tree and cherry blossom knots. There is a stork knot, a turtle knot, a knot named for the sacred mountain Fujiyama. An easy knot is called the “old man’s knot.” There is-also an “old woman’s knot.” – Hanford Journal, 1904

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