Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A light, sliding partition of thick paper framed in wood, mounted in grooves on the floor and ceiling, and functioning as a movable wall to form rooms in a traditional Japanese house.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A vertical rectangular sliding panel, often painted or decorated, used in Japan as a door or movable wall.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Japanese.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Japanese

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Examples

  • The large tea-houses contain the possibilities for a number of rooms which can be extemporised at once by sliding paper panels, called fusuma, along grooves in the floor and in the ceiling or cross-beams.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • The remaining wall, opening toward the suite of chambers, was fashioned of four great sliding doors called fusuma, dull silver of background, with paintings of shadowy mountain landscape done centuries before by one of the greatest of the Kanos.

    The Dragon Painter Mary McNeil Fenollosa

  • The drawings, too, on the "fusuma" (solid thick paper sliding doors separating adjacent rooms or shutting off the closet) are simple and neat, as is all Japanese pictorial art.

    Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic Sidney Lewis Gulick 1902

  • This exhibition includes such rarely displayed pieces as "Ki Fudo," considered one of Japan's great statues of Fudo Myoo, the wrathful-looking "unshakable spirit," as well as partition paintings and fusuma (sliding-door) paintings from temple-complex buildings.

    Time Off: Cultural Events Around Asia 2009

  • The curtain as architectural element refers back to traditional Japanese design elements such as shoji and sudare screens, and fusuma doors common within the traditional Japanese house.

    Joyn – Curtain & Wall-art by Hiroshi Tsunoda 2007

  • It is a town of activity and brisk trade, and manufactures a silk fabric in stripes of blue and black, and yellow and black, much used for making hakama and kimonos, a species of white silk crepe with a raised woof, which brings a high price in Tokiyo shops, fusuma, and clogs.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • The fusuma are light planed wood with a sweet scent, the matting nearly white, the balconies polished pine.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • Before you go the fusuma are slidden back, and what was your room becomes part of a great, open, matted space — an arrangement which effectually prevents fustiness.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • After a long search I could get nothing better than this room, with fusuma of tissue paper, in the centre of the din of the house, close to the doma and daidokoro.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

  • The yadoya at Innai was a remarkably cheerful one, but my room was entirely fusuma and shoji, and people were peeping in the whole time.

    Unbeaten Tracks in Japan Isabella Lucy 2004

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