Community-Based Kitano Shoten Undergoes Full Brand Renewal
Kitano Shoten in Kawasaki will reopen its main store on December 6, 2025. Introducing 'Connecting Bookshelves' based on the school library classification system (NDC), it aims to become a new place of learning that fosters serendipitous encounters with books.
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- 📰 Published: April 6, 2026 at 18:30
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－ A New Bookstore Connecting the Community and Learning －
Kitano Shoten Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Saiwai-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture; Representative Director: Shintaro Kitano), a community-based bookstore rooted in Kawasaki, is advancing a comprehensive review of its brand and will reopen the Kitano Shoten Main Store on December 6, 2025. In conjunction with this, we are renewing the store space, logo design, and website, and establishing a new core message: "Read, spread your wings."
While carrying on the journey of Kitano Shoten, which has connected the local community, schools, and readers since its founding, we are taking a new step forward as a "place of learning open to the community" appropriate for the coming era.
■ Renewal of Kitano Shoten Main Store - A new place of learning created by "Connecting Bookshelves"
At the Kitano Shoten Main Store, reopening on December 6, 2025, as an initiative symbolizing this renewal, we will introduce bookshelves based on the Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC), the same classification used in school libraries. Kitano Shoten has named these new bookshelves "Tsunagaru Hondana" (Connecting Bookshelves).
Conventional bookstore shelves are generally organized by genre, top sellers, or theme. However, based on a concept similar to school library classification, the "Connecting Bookshelves" are structured to make the relationships between books and the connections of knowledge more visible. This allows readers not only to reach the book they are looking for but also to naturally expand their interests and curiosity through accidental encounters with other books lined up in the vicinity.
For example, a reader standing in front of a shelf with an interest in a certain theme encounters new knowledge and questions by touching books in adjacent areas. When such a chain reaction occurs, reading transforms from mere information acquisition into an expansion of intellectual exploration. For children who have become familiar with school libraries, we aim to make the bookstore a more accessible and easy-to-enter place, and for adults, a catalyst for relearning and rediscovery.
■ Background of the birth of "Connecting Bookshelves"
Kitano Shoten tested a pioneering initiative for the "Connecting Bookshelves" in 2023.
It is the "Lion Library," which opened in a bookstore warehouse in Furuichiba 1-chome, Saiwai-ku. With an area of about 120 square meters, it utilized a corner of a warehouse that Kitano Shoten had previously used as a storage place for textbooks. The trigger for its establishment was an employee's idea: "Teachers are busy, wouldn't they be happy if we permanently exhibited sample books?" To support book selection by teachers in charge of libraries and librarians, about 5,000 sample books...
Kitano Shoten Co., Ltd. (Headquarters: Saiwai-ku, Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture; Representative Director: Shintaro Kitano), a community-based bookstore rooted in Kawasaki, is advancing a comprehensive review of its brand and will reopen the Kitano Shoten Main Store on December 6, 2025. In conjunction with this, we are renewing the store space, logo design, and website, and establishing a new core message: "Read, spread your wings."
While carrying on the journey of Kitano Shoten, which has connected the local community, schools, and readers since its founding, we are taking a new step forward as a "place of learning open to the community" appropriate for the coming era.
■ Renewal of Kitano Shoten Main Store - A new place of learning created by "Connecting Bookshelves"
At the Kitano Shoten Main Store, reopening on December 6, 2025, as an initiative symbolizing this renewal, we will introduce bookshelves based on the Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC), the same classification used in school libraries. Kitano Shoten has named these new bookshelves "Tsunagaru Hondana" (Connecting Bookshelves).
Conventional bookstore shelves are generally organized by genre, top sellers, or theme. However, based on a concept similar to school library classification, the "Connecting Bookshelves" are structured to make the relationships between books and the connections of knowledge more visible. This allows readers not only to reach the book they are looking for but also to naturally expand their interests and curiosity through accidental encounters with other books lined up in the vicinity.
For example, a reader standing in front of a shelf with an interest in a certain theme encounters new knowledge and questions by touching books in adjacent areas. When such a chain reaction occurs, reading transforms from mere information acquisition into an expansion of intellectual exploration. For children who have become familiar with school libraries, we aim to make the bookstore a more accessible and easy-to-enter place, and for adults, a catalyst for relearning and rediscovery.
■ Background of the birth of "Connecting Bookshelves"
Kitano Shoten tested a pioneering initiative for the "Connecting Bookshelves" in 2023.
It is the "Lion Library," which opened in a bookstore warehouse in Furuichiba 1-chome, Saiwai-ku. With an area of about 120 square meters, it utilized a corner of a warehouse that Kitano Shoten had previously used as a storage place for textbooks. The trigger for its establishment was an employee's idea: "Teachers are busy, wouldn't they be happy if we permanently exhibited sample books?" To support book selection by teachers in charge of libraries and librarians, about 5,000 sample books...