notebook japanese

These notebooks have a lot to offer in terms of substance, namely: a delicate white paper, which is provided with a discreet ruler and is very smooth according to Japanese writing habits, because in the land of the rising sun, to be able to accommodate the complex characters in the smallest space legibly, preferably write with fine-lead ink pens - but the paper can also cope with pencil, fountain pen, ballpoint pen and graphite. A bookbinding feature is the paper sheets, which are held together by a continuous thread stitching with 32 stitches (16 for the smaller format). The notebooks lie flat and can thus be written on without difficulty on each page. The folded cover made of embossed cardboard has a technical look and feel that is surprisingly easy to grip. The glued label allows both back and front labeling (the label is narrow and so vertical writing ability at least no disadvantage).

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.