Rev. Kiyoshi Gushiken and Chiaki Kaiho of the Japan Bible Society from Tokyo visited Flevodruk Harlingen two weeks ago. They came to see if everything was going well with the production of a Japanese pulpit Bible and to meet the staff involved.
This is a unique order that involved years of preparation. This Bible is more than 2,500 pages thick, executed with gilt cuts in a luxurious black leather binding. One Bible, therefore, weighs almost 3 kilos. This unique order ended up in Harlingen via bindery Fopmawier.
Wytze Fopma of Fopmawier is the only bindery in the world that dared to take on this order. He thought out everything down to every detail beforehand. Bindery Fopmawier won the order because of their rare and precious skills.
For the printing, he engaged Flevodruk Harlingen. Jurgen Drost of Flevodruk Harlingen: "Getting a book of this size right is enormously complex. It must not fall apart of course and must be easy to leaf through. It seems simple, a book, but incredible what all had to be thought out for this to achieve a perfect end product. The controls were different from what we are used to. The Japanese characters were difficult to decipher and, moreover, everything had to be made back to front because in Japan they read books back to front. Fantastic and enormously proud we are of our team for being able to contribute to this. But hats off to Wytze Fopma who very expertly took this project in hand."
The first books will go on transport to Japan before the summer in a sturdy crate that Wytze Fopma will have specially custom-made for this purpose. The books will receive national attention on television in Japan, which will also feature images from Friesland.
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