In my previous posts on this topic I discussed the some of the challenges and limitations of Bible design and publishing in Japan. Before reading this post, I encourage you to refer back to parts one and two to understand the current state of Japanese bible publishing, and my motives for writing these articles.
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| ハンディーバイブル NI-34H, NI-34DCH, NI-43H, NI43H-AP |
In my previous post I alluded to the fact that there is a type of bible that seems mysteriously absent from the Japanese market, namely, the thinline format of bible. In the United States, every major bible publisher offers their bibles in the thinline size.
I probably wouldn't be going too far out on a limb to say that thinline bibles are among, if not, the best selling bibles in the American market. Crossway has stated such in its own marketing of their thinline edition of the ESV, stating, "The top-selling ESV Thinline Bible is ideal for use at home and on the go."
Thinline bibles attempt to optimize for readability and portability in several ways; they usually use a two-column format, a paragraph typographical setting, thinner margins and letting (the space between lines), and thinner paper. The end result is a bible that at the spine is usually an inch or less while maintaining an 8 to 9 point font.
Thinline bibles generally refer to any bible with these characteristics with an A5 or larger footprint with a spine-width of an inch or less. There are compact and personal sized bibles that are just as thin, but the dimensions of a thinline bible tend to mean that it has a larger footprint, but a thinner profile, while maintaining a medium or large font for readability.
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| The Handy Bible with a compact ESV Pitt Minion |
In the case of most American thinline bibles, they tend to start at about 8.25 inches (21cm) by 5.25 inches (13.3cm), and an inch or less wide (2.5cm). Large-print thinlines can routinely balloon up to 9in by 6in.
The A5 size of paper (21cm x 14.8cm) commonly used in Japanese publishing is considered to be on the larger side, and bibles published at this size are routinely called such, that is, large sized.
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| The Handy Bible and ESV Pitt Minion compared |
However, a large sized Japanese bible printed on A5 tends to run well over 2000 pages, and are consistently between 5 and 6 cm, or two inches wide. In fact, most Japanese bibles are two or more inches wide, which is why in the previous posts I lovingly referred to them as bricks.
Good, Fast, or Cheap
Someone once explained that many important decisions have to find compromise between being good, being fast, or being cheap. One can have good and fast, but it is going to be expensive. One can have Good and cheap, but it is going to take a long time, One can have fast and cheap, but the quality is going to suffer. Regardless, there is always going to be compromise. The best is often the enemy of the good.
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| The Handy Bible profile vs. the Pitt Minion |
One of the challenges with creating a small and portable bible for the Japanese market has been the nature of the Japanese writing system. Japanese is traditionally written top to bottom, right to left. Added to that is the need to have wider letting, or space between the lines to accommodate rubi/furigana pronunciations of the kanji (chinese characters). Also, Japanese writing does not traditionally use paragraphs.
Most Japanese bibles balloon to over 2000 pages as a result of trying to accommodate this style of writing (tategaki). Japanese-English bilingual bibles, and study bibles tend to make room by switching over to a western writing orientation (yokogaki) and incorporating paragraphs.
In order to make compact bibles for the Japanese market, both the Japanese Bible Society (who publish The New Interconfessional Translation) and Word of Life Press (who publish the New Japanese Version, inspired by the NASB) both created compact bibles that simply shrunk the font size to accommodate a smaller footprint; but the page numbers tended to stay the same. The compromise in creating a compact bible that most Japanese publishers have routinely chosen is font size, which is unfortunate considering that some Japanese kanji can have dozens of tiny brush-strokes which are hard to discern at small sizes.
I was recently at a city-wide prayer gathering with pastors and leaders from around the area, including a middle aged Anglican priest. He brought a A6 sized compact bible to read from, and as a result, had to hold it inches from his face in order to read it--and he still struggled to read it out loud. Most compact Japanese bibles are unpleasant to read.
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| The large-sized Handy Bible & the Bible+ |
In the case of bible publishing, 'good, fast, or cheap,' can be exchanged for something like, 'page size, font size, page count.'
You can have a bible that has a smaller page size and a more legible font, but it is going to necessitate more pages. You can have less pages, and a small page size, but the font is going to be microscopic. There has been little innovation among Japanese bible publishers to address this issue.
That was until the Japanese Bible Society introduced the Handy Bible (ハンディーバイブル NI-34H). In 1988, the Japanese Bible Society decided to try something different. They had an ambitious goal of fitting two pages worth of text from their New Interconfessional Translation onto one page, in western style paragraph format, and keeping the pagination with the rest of their series of bibles in tact. The result was the relatively slim Handy Bible (sometimes referred to in the early days as the Half-Volume Bible ハーフボリュームバイブル, a name they would recycle later for a different project).
I don't have any specific sales numbers from the Japanese Bible Society, but a quick look at the used book market shows that the Handy Bible was one of their best sellers; still in print today.
The Handy Bible without the apocrypha checks in at a very slim 991 pages and right at 2.5cm; it is quite an accomplishment considering the constraints they had to work with (including their self-imposed goal of keeping the same pagination as their other bibles).
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| Handy Bible vs. B6 Half-Volume Bible |
However, the NI-34H Handy Bible (and the NI-34DCH, with Apocrypha) are both printed on B6 paper (17.6cm x 12.5cm; 7in x 5in), putting it into what I would consider the compact bible family. The Handy Bible is more or less the same size as a Cambridge Pitt Minion, although a cm wider and not quite as legible font-wise.
I was originally planning on writing about the missed opportunity of not publishing the Handy Bible in a B5 size, and thus creating a true thinline bible in the traditional sense; only to find out that back in the late 90's, early 2000's they did a very limited run of the NI-43H and NI-43DCH which are a A5 version (large-size) of the Handy Bible.
An A5 Handy Bible, if you can find one, might set you back as much as $100 USD, despite their original $25 price tag. I spent the better part of three months searching for one, only to get my hands on a heavily used one for about $10.
The NI-43H is, to my knowledge, the only bible ever produced by a Japanese publishing company that could be considered a true thinline bible. It is the ideal size for a bible, in a format that is readable with a font size, that although small is quite readable. I have my own theory that the NI-43H was dead on arrival largely because of a marketing issue. It was marketed as a 'large bible,' because of its A5 footprint, which in the minds of Japanese Christians likely conjured up images of a heavy desk bound reference bible.
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| Ghosting compared. L: The Bible+, R: NI-43H |
The NI-43H likely needed to be rebranded as something else. Maybe something reminiscent of the english branding term 'thinline.' The term thinline, despite being used by Japanese guitar manufacturers for lightweight electric guitars, isn't exactly easy to pronounce in Japanese, becoming something like sheen-rhyne. It also doesn't mean anything in particular. I'm sure someone with creativity could come up with a catchy term to describe a thinline bible for the Japanese market.
A Buried Treasure
In a strange turn of events, despite creating possibly the most portable and readable bible ever by a Japanese publishing company, the Japanese Bible Society seems to have squandered its potential and more or less kicked it to the curb. One can actually find old comments online by Japanese Christians lamenting the demise or lack of availability of the A5 Handy Bible.
The A5 large sized NI-43H Handy Bible is as close to the ideal balance between page size, font size, and page number that a Japanese bible has ever come. Obviously, without being constrained by the need to conform to the pagination of the other New Interconfession bibles, they could have added a couple hundred more pages, formatted the text slightly differently and increased the font size and boldness significantly with little effort making something truly spectacular.
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| Sample of the glossy color pages from The Bible+ |
After being buried and forgotten for a decade, in 2009 the Japanese Bible Society dusted it off again and re-issued it as the NI43H-AP and NI43DCH-AP, 'The Bible+.' The Bible+ was a collaboration between the Japanese Bible Society and the Italian Bible Society which saw over a hundred pages of glossy color illustrations and photos added to the front and back of the bible, with the hopes of helping young people understand the bible better. A laudable goal.
They decided to use the NI-43H text block, but in the process somehow printed it on the least opaque bible paper I have ever come across. The bleed through and ghosting on 'The Bible+' are some of the worst I have ever seen (unfortunately meaning it isn't a great candidate for a bible re-bind sans the color pages). Not only that, by adding a hard cover and over 100 pages of glossy color paper to the bible, they added a bunch of unnecessary bulk, and took away the main feature that made the NI-43H such an amazing bible, its size and portability.
The Bible+ had a noble goal of introducing the bible to younger Japanese who were not familiar with much of the cultural or historic context in which the bible was written; but its execution leaves a lot to be desired. The use of the large-size Handy Bible was probably the right choice all things considered, but the quality leaves a lot to be desired, and a slightly higher GSM paper might have made it a much better finished product.
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| A review from Amazon of The Bible+ |
In 2024, the Handy Bible in the B6 size is still available from the Japanese Bible Society; and they have attempted at least two other projects, including one with Royal Jongbloed and one with the Korean Bible Society in an attempt to create alternative compact bibles. We'll be looking at the Jongbloed printed and bound Half-Volume Bible in a future post as it tried to accomplish something similar to the Handy Bible, but in a very different way.
In 2017 Word of Life Press Ministries released an update to the New Japanese Bible translation; as of yet, nor have they ever released anything to compete with the Handy Bible or anything like a thinline bible. Word of Life has formatted the 2017 translation into western-oriented paragraph format for both their bilingual Japanese-English bible and for the BibleNavi, their study bible. In order to create a true thinline, all they would need to do is release a double column paragraph format bible with the work they've already done, which in my mind is simply a missed business opportunity.
In 2018 the Japanese Bible Society updated the New Interconfessional translation with the new Japanese Bible Society Interconfessional version. As of 2024, they have yet to release a Handy Bible version of this new translation in either the B6 size nor the A5 size.
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| Jesus wept. |
I have wondered whether or not CVD-19 might have had something to do with the lack of new releases from them. A lot of things have changed in Japanese bible publishing as a result of the pandemic.
The company that both the Japanese Bible Society and Word of Life Press used for their leather bibles and edge gilting closed after over seventy years of operation, possibly in part because of the virus. Aside from a small blurb in the Japan Bible Society's annual report, I haven't found much more information about it, but I can imagine that this is likely why neither company has released any new leather bound bibles since their initial print runs of the new translations.
Hopefully we'll get to see both the Japanese Bible Society and Word of Life Press release their translations in a thinline version some day. If no one else is going to do anything, I might have to take matters into my own hands at some point.
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| Learning the ropes in Word. |
