shoji

Shoji are traditional Japanese sliding doors. Japanese paper is pasted over a wooden latticework, and usually one door slides past the other. They are used in Japanese‐style rooms as partitions or doors, and they can also be fitted into windows. The light shining through shoji can fill rooms with a nice and warm feeling, but people who care about privacy might find it difficult to live in such a room with no locks and no good way to shut out the outside noise.

Japanese offices are usually open space and have little privacy. It may be caused by such Shoji culture. There is a proverb that uses shoji, "Walls have ears. Shoji has eyes." It means that there is a high possibility that someone is listening your secret.