Weekend/ CULTURE & MORE: Tiny and cute, homemade 'bean books' on a roll

The two could not be further apart in personality: One stands on the side of discipline, and for her, success comes as the product of years practice and study. The other is the prodigy, a self-taught amateur who with her first effort won recognition from abroad.

Award winner Miyako Akai(LOUIS TEMPLADO/ STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

Together they form the bookends, if you will, to the world of tiny tomes made to fit in the palm of their readers' hands. Called mame-hon or "bean books"--these diminuitive works of art are enjoying popularity in Japan well beyond their size. You can find them on display in specialized shops and galleries, in plastic balls inside vending machines and on collectors' shelves. The two women are a big part of the mini-book boom.

Shiori Tanaka is the stern one. Originally an editor and proofreader for a publishing house, she learned the art of making full-sized books before setting her focus on miniaturized ones. Tanaka looms large in Japan's miniature-book world, traveling across the country to hold bookmaking workshops and running the Mame-hon Festa, an annual gathering devoted to miniature bookmaking that attracts hundreds of aficionados.

"I've been in love with books since I was a child. I can always discover something in them that I never knew before," she says. "I've never been able to go long without them. Right after I had my baby, I carried him with me to the bookstore." Her husband, incidentally, is a book dealer.

Her house in Yokohama, which also serves as her workshop, is crammed with books, yet there's nary a trace of the tools and materials for her miniature creations. One of the attractions of the craft, she says, is that it can be pursued in the tightest of spaces.

Tanaka's appreciation for books as objects goes back over two decades, to when she was still an editor. She was given the memoirs of Teinosuke Endo--a manuscript restorer to the Imperial Household Agency for 60 years--to turn into a book. Tanaka was so inspired by the master she decided to devote herself to making books.

Tanaka began teaching miniature bookmaking only a couple of years ago, when she saw a lack of rigor in today's young adherents. Miniature books are nothing new to Japan, Tanaka explains. Writers, poets, typesetters and woodblock artists have long collaborated to deliver limited edition books to subscribed collectors. It's always been a niche in the fine art of bookbinding that only in the past few years has become a mainstream hobby. "Now miniature books have become popular with young women, mostly in their 20s and 30s," she says, a trend that older people are just now starting to follow. "It's something you can do alone at home, so often people don't get to learn the fundamentals. Whenever I meet hobbyists I end up explaining basic techniques they don't know. I've done it so often I decided to start holding workshops."

The appeal of miniature books is simple: The books are tiny and therefore have a high cute quotient--a sine qua non to young Japanese women. The finished products don't take much space and allow makers to express themselves at little cost, especially now that the design and printing can be done on personal computers. Many of Tanaka's pupils, in fact, are designers or illustrators wanting to express themselves beyond their work.

But the major reason for the current popularity, Tanaka says, is due to the success of Miyako Akai--the first Japanese to be awarded a prize by the U.S.-based Miniature Book Society. In 2006, Akai earned a Distinguished Book Award for "Caged"--her first submission to the competition. Measuring 1 1/2 inches by 1 11/16 inches, the book wowed judges with its fine production values (it arrived in a miniature bamboo cage), woodblock prints and near-perfect match of form and content. Last year she earned another prize with "Dancing on the Cloud"--fashioned from wispy Japanese paper and jacketed in cotton to resemble a cumulus.

"I was surprised I won, but I guess it's something I'm naturally good at," says Akai, who before turning pro worked as an architectural draftswoman. Akai didn't intend to be a book miniaturist: For years she was a struggling author, sending her manuscripts to publishers only to have them rejected. Finally she decided to put out a modest-sized book on her own, with fame the result.

Now she produces miniature books full time, sometimes employing assistants to do the typesetting (she prefers movable type to desktop publishing) and make the jackets. Her books, which once cost a few thousand yen, are prized by collectors even as their value has risen to tens of thousands of yen. Recently, she's also begun teaching students that seek her out.

But that doesn't mean Akai considers herself beyond learning. Soon after earning the Miniature Book Society award, Akai attended one of Tanaka's workshops to learn more techniques.

More recently, she's enrolled in a long-term bookbinding program, where for the past two months she's been working on making a full-sized notebook.

"It's humbling to start again from scratch," she says. "Until now I'd been working by myself, unaware of how much depth there is to the craft."

Akai doesn't actually plan to step up to full-sized works, though, because she finds miniature books an excellent fit.

"Size is also one way to express yourself," she says. "When you give someone a miniature book it seems a lot more personal than when you give them a large one. It's like the difference between a normal speaking voice and a whisper."(IHT/Asahi: May 9,2008)