The World Washi Summit — an international gathering of producers, collectors and practitioners of the art of Japanese paper — is coming to a close this weekend, but most of its related exhibitions are not. Shows at Loop and David Kaye Gallery (which has terrifically detailed work by Barbara Klunder) are excellent, but begin with “Washi over Time,” the Japan Foundation’s primer on the subject. The context for paper in Japanese society is, of course, rich, and the show demonstrates how washi began in Buddhist temples in the early seventh century, gradually moved to the court, and then to everyday use. It always had an aesthetic role, but only recently have artists divorced this role from the sacred and the practical.

Toshi Aoyagi and others at the Origami Society of Toronto have created a beautiful series of roses and cranes that line the long hallway running beside the three exhibition rooms. Many of the show’s pieces are nearly, or over, 100 years old — this alone being proof of washi’s resilience. (There is a Buddhist Kakejiku, or hanging scroll, for instance, from 1780, which was found by a traveller to Tokyo in 1980; it had been placed in the trash on garbage night.) Items worn by samurais are especially engaging: shoes, shoulder pads, cartridges and fans (which double as weapons), all containing washi to varying degrees.

This aspect of washi is bound to impress Westerners, who probably only know paper clothing from Twiggy and the ’60s. It is clear from the show that the Japanese have, to some extent, served up this concept as a similar novelty (there are crepe socks from the 1890s on display, meant for the feet of foreign hotel guests) but the tradition of the kamiko, or paper kimono, shown here on performer Tojuro VI in a filmed performance, might be the encapsulation of washi’s magnificence: organic and handmade, yet, both as a concept and as a substance, remarkably eternal.