In the Shadow of Fujiyama
Nagaizumi-cho, Suntou-gun, Shizuoka is located southwest of
Tokyo and headquarters to the Tokushu Paper Manufactur- ing Co.
Ltd., a specialty paper producer that is famous in Japan. In 2001,
the company opened "PAM", a private museum with extremely
interesting, rare and very valuable exhibits dedicated to the
subject of paper.
Fujiyama with its snow-capped peak, Japan's highest and holy mountain, is always within view. No matter where a person goes in Shizuoka, the breathtaking view of this 3,776-meter (12,388-foot) high giant is inescapable. The Tokushu Paper Manufacturing Co. Ltd. with its roughly 620 employees is headquartered here. Kiyotoshi Misawa, 56, is already the tenth chief executive officer of this company founded in 1926 and he has held this position since April of 2004. Generating about 22 billion Yen (170 million Euro/218 million US-Dollars) in annual sales, the company does research and works very heavily in the area of traditional paper production. They are constantly looking for suitable natural base materials and accordingly offer unusual types of paper and even more unusual paper designs.
In search of the ideal paper design, employees embody their visual image of nature in their papers, for example, in order to create papers that have surfaces and colors like stone, marble, wood or other natural materials. "Paper is an important part of Japanese culture and far more than just a printing stock. It is also used in housing construction, where the interior walls of the traditional houses consist of paper. Traditional Japanese houses are built out of three basic materials: paper, wood and earth," Misawa points out.
Whether as insoles in shoes, for labels or stationery
If it is to be something extremely special, in Japan they rely on a product from Shizuoka. The company is a niche producer, not a mass producer. The company turns out about 55,000 tons of paper per year, which constitutes a small volume for a Japanese paper manufacturer because altogether about 30 million tons per year are manufactured in Japan and scarcely is any paper purchased abroad. The raw materials for paper manufacturing, on the other hand, for the most part come from other countries. If regular paper costs approximately 100 Yen per kilo (0.72 Euro/0.90 US-Dollar), then with Tokushu it is around 400 Yen (2.88 Euro/3.60 US-Dollars). But they also meet other demands than merely writing paper. Special papers for catalogs, bible pages, posters, admission tickets, post cards, paper money, checks, photo papers and labels, for example, are produced.
Among these are papers that even if totally saturated with water do not swell up or tear easily, or even types of paper that do not decompose. No wonder, therefore, that of the overall 25,000 types Japanese paper and paper designs Tokushu themselves offer 5,000. On the specialty paper market, for this reason, the company is also a market leader in Japan. One of the favorite types of paper is called "Tanto". The name is derived from a Portuguese word and means "many". This type of paper comes in 152 colors, as well as various weights and different formats to choose from. There may well be no other single product in the world with such a vast selection as Tanto.
You can download the complete document on the top right-hand side.
Fujiyama with its snow-capped peak, Japan's highest and holy mountain, is always within view. No matter where a person goes in Shizuoka, the breathtaking view of this 3,776-meter (12,388-foot) high giant is inescapable. The Tokushu Paper Manufacturing Co. Ltd. with its roughly 620 employees is headquartered here. Kiyotoshi Misawa, 56, is already the tenth chief executive officer of this company founded in 1926 and he has held this position since April of 2004. Generating about 22 billion Yen (170 million Euro/218 million US-Dollars) in annual sales, the company does research and works very heavily in the area of traditional paper production. They are constantly looking for suitable natural base materials and accordingly offer unusual types of paper and even more unusual paper designs.
In search of the ideal paper design, employees embody their visual image of nature in their papers, for example, in order to create papers that have surfaces and colors like stone, marble, wood or other natural materials. "Paper is an important part of Japanese culture and far more than just a printing stock. It is also used in housing construction, where the interior walls of the traditional houses consist of paper. Traditional Japanese houses are built out of three basic materials: paper, wood and earth," Misawa points out.
Whether as insoles in shoes, for labels or stationery
If it is to be something extremely special, in Japan they rely on a product from Shizuoka. The company is a niche producer, not a mass producer. The company turns out about 55,000 tons of paper per year, which constitutes a small volume for a Japanese paper manufacturer because altogether about 30 million tons per year are manufactured in Japan and scarcely is any paper purchased abroad. The raw materials for paper manufacturing, on the other hand, for the most part come from other countries. If regular paper costs approximately 100 Yen per kilo (0.72 Euro/0.90 US-Dollar), then with Tokushu it is around 400 Yen (2.88 Euro/3.60 US-Dollars). But they also meet other demands than merely writing paper. Special papers for catalogs, bible pages, posters, admission tickets, post cards, paper money, checks, photo papers and labels, for example, are produced.
Among these are papers that even if totally saturated with water do not swell up or tear easily, or even types of paper that do not decompose. No wonder, therefore, that of the overall 25,000 types Japanese paper and paper designs Tokushu themselves offer 5,000. On the specialty paper market, for this reason, the company is also a market leader in Japan. One of the favorite types of paper is called "Tanto". The name is derived from a Portuguese word and means "many". This type of paper comes in 152 colors, as well as various weights and different formats to choose from. There may well be no other single product in the world with such a vast selection as Tanto.
You can download the complete document on the top right-hand side.
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Tokushu Paper Manufacturing Co.
More information about the company is available here Japanese Homepage
