From Chapter 1: Introducing Japanese Books

Historical Development
Japan inherited from China all the essential elements for book production: a writing system for recording the spoken language, paper and ink, woodblock printing technology, and even a developed book style. The earliest form of Japanese book, modeled after the Chinese style, consisted of lengths of silk or paper wound into the shape of a handscroll. Known as kansubon, or "rolled book," the handscroll was the dominant book form for nearly a thousand years after its introduction in about the fifth century.

Scroll books had the disadvantage of being inconvenient to store and awkward to unroll whenever the examination of a particular section of text was desired. Thus, during the Heian period (794–1185) a number of other book forms, also based on Chinese models, developed alongside the scroll. The simplest of these was the accordion book, constructed by folding the text of a scroll back and forth accordion fashion and adding covers to the front and back of the resulting stack. When a single cover encircled the text from front to back the book was known as a "flutter book" (sempuyo), since the concertina-like pages, being unattached at the spine, could easily flutter outward in a breeze. Albums constituted a third type of accordion binding. Instead of starting with a long roll of paper made by joining sheets of paper end to end, album books were made from sheets of paper folded once and joined together with paste along the unfolded edges, or along both the folded and unfolded edges, depending on the style. Whereas plain accordion books served as the main vehicle for recording printed Buddhist scriptures, albums served more as a display format for samples of calligraphy or painting.

The Heian book known as "butterfly book" (detchoso) marked a more radical departure in binding style. Rather than being assembled concertina fashion, the papers for this book were folded in half with the text-side facing inward, stacked, and pasted together along the spine fold so that the back of each sheet was attached to the back of the neighboring sheet. Thus was produced the first "book-shaped" book, a style that did not die out completely until the seventeenth century. The name, which may have originally meant merely "pasted binding," came to be considered an apt description of the book's open pages, since they stood out in pairs like the wings of a butterfly.

The susceptibility of pasted bindings to insect damage may have been an impetus to the development of a new style of thread-sewn book. Whereas all previous bindings had been inspired by Chinese examples, one type of stitched book invented in the twelfth century was uniquely Japanese. Known as the multisection book, this style bears an uncanny resemblance to Western signature binding. To produce the book a number of sheets were stacked and folded in half to form a section, then several of these folded sections were stitched together through the central fold. In contrast to other bindings, which more often than not were printed with religious texts, multisection books seem to have been used almost exclusively for handwritten copies of native Japanese literature including poetry anthologies, novels, and diaries. In fact, some scholars refer to this style as Yamato binding to indicate its native Japanese origins.

Multisection binding enjoyed a period of popularity, but after the fourteenth century it began to be replaced by pouch binding (fukuro toji), a Chinese type of sewn binding that eventually supplanted all other styles and even today is considered the most typical Japanese style. The pouch-bound book is made up of sheets that are inscribed or printed on one side only, folded in half text-side out, and stacked together. Covers are added to the front and back, and the book is stitched along the spine—the edge opposite the folds—so that each double-leaved page forms an envelope, or pouch (fukuro), that is open at the top and bottom. While the basic four-hole binding is by far the most common type of pouch-bound book, there are other variations named after their more elaborate stitching patterns. These include Kangxi binding, hemp-leaf binding, and tortoise-shell binding. Chinese-style texts (called tohon, or "Tang" books) are also bound in a modified version of four-hole binding. Other types of binding include Yamato binding, where fabric or paper cords are used to secure the text instead of thread, and the traditional account and receipt books, whose folded pages are held together with cord of twisted hemp.

The development of printing has always been closely linked to the development of the book in Japan. Although the techniques of woodblock printing were known to the Japanese at a very early date (Buddhist mantras printed in Japan in the eighth century are considered to be among the oldest printed documents in the world), printing was for many centuries a Buddhist monopoly, with the result that religious texts formed the bulk of material printed in the years before 1600. One reason that printing did not spread more widely is that paper remained an expensive commodity and only the monasteries—centers of both wealth and learning— could afford the costs of book production.

During the Edo period (1603–1868), however, a number of factors combined to bring about tremendous growth in the field of book publishing. Unification of the country under the Tokugawa shogunate brought years of peace and prosperity, the settled conditions encouraged the growth of towns and fostered increased literacy, and the paper industry expanded, making paper more readily available just at the time when demand was growing. For the first time, classic works of Japanese literature like The Tale of Genji and Tales of Ise —which previously had circulated among the wealthy in manuscript form only—appeared in print. Soon books appeared on every conceivable subject, from scholarly historical works and studies of geography, mathematics, and moral conduct to picture books and popular novels. Among the latter were the famous blue-, red-, black-, and yellow-covered books, named after the color of the paper covers that adorned the pouch-bound texts. Basically picture books accompanied by a minimal amount of text, they dealt with children's stories, morality tales, romances, and accounts of everyday life, and enjoyed an immense following among the general populace.

The Meiji Restoration of 1868 led to the rapid introduction of Western technology and marked a revolution in book production in Japan. Traditional Japanese books, either written with brush or printed by woodblock, had always required soft, absorbent paper. (The fact that ink penetrates into this kind of paper, usually making the reverse side unusable, helps explain why so many styles of Japanese binding rely on double-leaved pages.) Metal type, in contrast, made use of a sized, harder-surfaced paper—one that could be produced most economically by machine. The new technology made it inevitable that the once-ubiquitous pouch-bound book would give way almost completely to the Western-style hardcover book printed with metal type on machine-made paper.

Today traditional binding remains in limited use for guest registers, calligraphic albums, artists' books, and certain special-edition printed texts. In addition to being appreciated for their distinctive beauty, however, Japanese bindings still appeal strongly to layperson and professional alike because they are much easier to execute and much easier to repair than their Western-style counterparts. Though large-scale production of Japanese-style books may not be commercially viable, there still are many dedicated binders, scholars, artists, and book lovers whose interest is sure to keep the tradition of Japanese binding alive.