thumb|upright=1.35|Shoji paper sliding doors in the Rinshunkaku at [[Sankei-en (Important Cultural Property)]]
thumb|upright=1.35|Shoji doors next to the [[tokonoma alcove, Rinshunkaku]]
thumb|upright=1.35| alt=View along wood-floored engawa towards a corner showing shoji edge-on and, on the far side of the corner, from the inside, with light shining through.|A tatami room surrounded by paper shoji (paper outside, lattice inside). The shoji are surrounded by an [[engawa (porch/corridor); the engawa is surrounded by garasu-do, all-glass sliding panels.]]
A is a door, window or room divider used in traditional Japanese architecture, consisting of translucent (or transparent) sheets on a lattice frame. Where light transmission is not needed, the similar but opaque fusuma is used (/closet doors, for instance). Shoji usually slide, but may occasionally be hung or hinged, especially in more rustic styles.
Shoji are very lightweight, so they are easily slid aside, or taken off their tracks and stored in a closet, opening the room to other rooms or the outside. Fully traditional buildings may have only one large room, under a roof supported by a post-and-lintel frame, with few or no permanent interior or exterior walls; the space is flexibly subdivided as needed by the removable sliding wall panels. In modern construction, the shoji often do not form the exterior surface of the building; they sit inside a sliding glass door or window. Sliding doors cannot traditionally be locked. This style was simplified in teahouse-influenced sukiya-zukuri architecture, and spread to the homes of commoners in the Edo Period (1603–1868), since which shoji have been largely unchanged. The traditional wood-and-paper construction is highly flammable. "" literally means "woven"; the halved joints alternate in direction so that the laths are interwoven. The interweaving is structural, and the paper (which is tensioned by spraying it with water
Coniferous wood is preferred for its fine, straight grain. Shoji with kōshi made of split bamboo are called take-shōji (). Kōshi are sometimes made of aluminium, shaped to resemble wood. Patterns may also be combined. Patterns can be classified according to jigumi, the foundational grid; this may be square, diamond-shaped, or hexagonal. Rectangular shoji may skew, in which case bent springs of bamboo are inserted into the short diagonal to push them back square.