Detail map of 8, 2-chōme, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tōkyō-to, Japan Overview map of 8, 2-chōme, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tōkyō-to, Japan

A: 8, 2-chōme, Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tōkyō-to, Japan

The Smallest Set of Physical Books When Published

1979 to 1980

In 1979 and 1980 Toppan Printing Company, Tokyo, Japan, published the Toppan Micro Trio in an edition of 500 sets. The set included: Birth Stone, Language of Flowers, and The Zodiacal Signs and Their Symbols. The three microbooks each consisted of 16 tiny pages measuring two by two millimeters, and were apparently in tiny leather bindings, red, dark blue, and black. From 1979 to 1985 these were the smallest printed books in the world.

Louis Bondy, an antiquarian bookseller specializing in miniature books, described his experience viewing this set:

“I recently had the terrifying experience when breathing against the case to see one of the books take off like a speck of dust and it was nothing short of a miracle that I managed to find it again and replace it in its allotted space.”

Bondy speculated that with the production of this microset printers have now “plumbed the ultimate depths of book production”  (http://cabinetmagazine.org/issues/25/foer.php, accessed 02-21-2011).

Timeline Themes