From an Era Before Printing or Bookbinding

Chapter 2: Books Cannot Be Defined (4)

To begin with, when did things called "books" first appear?

The Latin word for book, "liber," originally referred to the inner bark of a tree. Along with stone, the inner bark of trees was the oldest material humans used to write characters on. However, ancient people also wrote on a variety of other materials. Thousands of clay tablets inscribed with characters have been discovered at archaeological sites in Mesopotamia, and in other regions, wax tablets, wooden boards, bones, cloth, palm leaves, animal skins, stone, and metal have also been found.
The etymology of the Greek word for book, "biblion," is "biblos," which means papyrus. Many words used in Western languages today, such as "Bible," "bibliophile," and "bibliotheca," are derived from this.

Bruno Blasselle, "A History of the Book" (Sogensha, 1998), p. 18

Long before printing technology was born, and even before the material known as paper existed, the word "book" already existed. In the first place, "book" was a word that referred to the inner bark of trees or papyrus—that is, the material used for recording—and these were either board-shaped or scroll-shaped. Later, the form of the codex, which continues to the present day, was born.

The form of the book underwent a change early in the common era. Replacing the scrolls used until then, the codex—sheets of paper stacked and bound together—appeared, becoming the "book" in the form we see today.
Unlike scrolls, which cannot be read without using both hands, codices were easy to handle, store, and carry because they were not bulky, and furthermore, characters could be written on both sides of the page. For this reason, from the 2nd to the 4th century, the codex came to be widely used along with the spread of Christianity.

Bruno Blasselle, "A History of the Book" (Sogensha, 1998), p. 20

It is true that when we say "book" today, we might imagine a printed and bound codex. However, there was a time when things were called books even if they were not printed or bound. It seems strange to draw a line at a certain point and decide that only things that are printed and bound are books.

In fact, even today, if you go to a museum, handwritten manuscripts are exhibited as legitimate books. If you go to a used bookstore, even personal scrapbooks, photo albums, and diaries are traded at high prices, especially those with a certain historical value. "The Sketchbook Project," which is based in Brooklyn, New York, and collects and exhibits sketchbooks from all over the world, and the "Techorui Toshoshitsu" (Notebook Library), which collects diaries, planners, and idea notebooks and exhibits them at a gallery in Sangubashi, Tokyo, can be said to be new types of libraries that propose contemporary ways to enjoy handwritten books. It cannot be said that these are not books.

Also, if you look closely at new bookstores, you will find a surprisingly large number of items that are not necessarily bound, such as single-sheet maps, postcards, and kamishibai (picture-story shows). If you go to a used bookstore, all kinds of paper that someone, somewhere, is thought to want—starting with movie flyers and posters, and including tickets and wrapping paper—are called "paper goods" and form a genre of their own. In light of the ancient definition, it cannot be said that these unbound items are not books either.

Reprinted from "A Reader for Future Bookstores" (NHK Publishing), pp. 64-67