Japanese Craftsman Masterfully Restores Old Books into Like-New Condition. If you have ever bemoaned that a treasured book was falling apart, then you will relish seeing how this Japanese craftsman masterfully restored a tattered 1,000-page dictionary near perfect condition. Well, this is an episode of the Japanese show called Shuri, “Bakaseru” which means “The Fascinating Craftsman” featured Nobuo Okano, an artisan who specializes in old books.
Thus during the ten minutes long segment, the craftsman demonstrates how the well-loved English-Japanese dictionary was brought back to new life. It has had fairly a history and served the owner from his junior high years through his adult life. Now that his daughter is entering college, he wants to pass the book along to her.
Okano starts the restoration by cleaning all of the old glue from the book’s spine and repairing pages of maps included in it. Though they cannot be returned to an untouched condition, they are glued to paper and now have a solid base. Then, he comes to the most tedious part of the whole process.
Okano unfolds hundreds of bent page corners with tweezers, separately ironing each of their flat in shape. Once that’s he had done this part, the book is looking much better shape, but there was still much work to do. The tips of the pages are stained with purple ink, so he uses a guillotine book cutter to trim those unsightly edges.
Moreover constructing a fresh cover is the last step, and he embellished it with the salvaged title piece of the original book. The process ends with episode expressions of the happy and thankful customer giving the dictionary to his daughter. If you want to see the video below to see just how Okano completed this incredible restore, please click on the below link.
