We were quite astonished: the impression of incompleteness that this notebook from Japanese manufacturer Midori gives at first glance turned out to be an optical illusion on closer inspection. For we were actually holding a fully-fledged, thread-sewn book with front and back matter pages (the so-called dirty titles), thicker book covers, a gauze spine and a fine drawing ribbon. The unusual binding makes for unusually good handling and durability: as the eleven bound segments each contain only four thread-sewn sheets, these booklets can be opened wide and flat without forming the spine edge in the middle, which interferes with writing. This is because the fewer sheets stitched together in a single booklet, the wider a notebook can be opened.

The notebook in compact A5 format is also so simple in its design that it offers the greatest possible scope for your creativity: for notes as well as for free design, as a sketchbook, travel journal or diary or in picture and text à la scrapbook. Thanks to the flat position on the table, the pages can be easily written on, covered with newspaper articles, photographs, business cards or restaurant bills, or stamped with stamps. The cover can also be written on, as the front and back are made of uncoated uncoated paper. Prints, glued-on pictures, papers or labels adhere incredibly well to the untreated paper and remain visible through the transparent cover, and it ensures that several notebooks give a uniform impression even if they are designed differently. The paper (80 gsm) comes in the usual excellent quality of Japanese stationery: with a fine, smooth surface, chamois-colored and optionally blank or with a dot grid. A set of stickers with tabs from 1 to 12 and labels, which are stuck horizontally around the spine of the notebook as is customary in Japan, is also included.

The outstanding characteristics and undisputed extraordinarily high quality of Japanese stationery have partly to do with the fact that Japanese writing is difficult to mechanise on a typewriter. The first typewriters were introduced at the beginning of the last century. In addition to Japanese syllable writing the Chinese characters called “Kanji” are common in Japan. The Kanji prove to be exceptionally difficult to reproduce. Until the introduction of the personal computer in the office, it was customary therefore to write business correspondence by hand, and one used the best stationery available to leave a good impression. The passion for extraordinary stationery has survived in Japan even if it is not used for official correspondence anymore. For daily notes, a paper like the lined note paper offered here is put to use. It‘s thread-sewn and features a spine reinforced with black and gold embossed spine tape. An obscure, if amusing side remark: By printing “containing best-ruled foolscap” the Japanese manufacturer came a cropper. Because none of these notebooks is in foolscap, the traditional Anglo-Saxon paper format somewhat larger than DIN A4.