Stationery Sketch Encyclopedia

The author of this book, Kentaro Yamamoto, is just an ordinary Japanese elementary school student. In the fifth grade, he started looking for a "large eraser that could win" for a game in his class called "who can flick the other's eraser the furthest," and thus became fascinated with stationery. He never imagined that even small stationery items contained various wisdom: "For example, if the corner of an eraser's wrapper doesn't have a tear-off design, the wrapper will tear if too much force is applied while using the eraser."

So, from the sixth grade onwards, Kentaro Yamamoto began illustrating and recording the features of his favorite stationery and his impressions after using them in a white notebook. After he finished describing all the stationery at home, he would take his notebook with test writings to stationery stores to continue his "research."

He presented this research report as a gift for the 10th anniversary of Tang Tang Stationery Store, where he had been frequenting to study stationery since he was eight years old. The owner, Norie Tomita, said: "At first, I just thought (Kentaro had) a lot of passion for doing this, but the finished product exceeded expectations, which was truly amazing."

Subsequently, the owner introduced Kentaro's illustrated guide on Facebook, which sparked heated discussions among netizens and attracted the attention of publishers. His hand-drawn research report, over a hundred pages long, was published as a book, and within one month of its release, sales exceeded 40,000 copies.