Abstract
This chapter concerns how knotting practices in several contexts in Japan, such as wrapped gifts, an opening ritual of a sacred mountain site, and a work of art commemorating a mass tragedy, express moral relationships between individuals, in communities, and with the dead. A model for these relationships is suggested by Freudian psychoanalysis, the myth of the Gordian Knot and concepts of knots among the Dinka people of South Sudan. Knots in Japan express ambivalence about maternal figures and the affective state of unconditional mutual dependence (amae).