Packages “are no longer the temporary accessory of the object to be transported, but itself becomes an object; the envelope, in itself, is consecrated as a precious though gratuitous thing; the package is a thought; … Yet by its very perfection, this envelope, often repeated (you can be unwrapping a package forever), postpones the discovery of the object it contains–one which is often insignificant, for it is precisely a specialty of the Japanese package that the triviality of the thing be disproportionate to the luxury of the envelope: a sweet, a bit of sugared bean paste, a vulgar “souvenir” … are wrapped with as much sumptuousness as a jewel. It is as if the box were the object of the gift, not what it contains … the very thing it encloses and signifies is for a very long time put off until later, as if the package’s function were not to protect in space but to postpone in time. … The richness of the thing and the profundity of meaning are discharged only at the price of a triple quality imposed on all fabricated objects: that they be precise, mobile, and empty.”

Roland Barthes, “Packages”, in Empire of Signs, 1982 (translated by Richard Howard)