CONTENTS

Rediscovering publishing in the age of the network

3

What will change with EPUB3?

9

Ebook for everyone!!
Wish for reading of persons with reading disabilities

15

Bricklaying ten thousand public ﬁles under the blue sky 17

Original Edition (Japanese) first published on July 7, 2011English Edition first published on October 20, 2011
Cover Design: Koga Hirano
Editorial Design: Marui-Kobunsha Corporation
The Terms and Conditions in this brochure may be changed without prior notice.
* T-Time, .book, .press, Crochet are registered trademarks of Voyager Japan, Inc.
* Other product, company and service names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of theirrespective owners.

Voyager Japan, Inc.
5-41-14 Jingumae, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan
http://www.voyager.co.jp
tel. +81-3-5467-7070 fax. +81-3-5467-7080

Rediscovering publishing in the age of the network

President, Voyager Japan, Inc.



Masaaki HAGINO
but it was nevertheless one demanded by those people
firmly dedicated to bringing new books into the world.
Even in those unformed early years, the faith that aflourishing print culture would one day come into being
was already undeniably there.

❖ Roots I refuse to forget
Even now I sometimes stop and wonder what led me into
electronic publishing. Certainly I did not start out buoyed byany grand dreams, or great confidence. Rather, I had been
searching for an escape from conventional media and its
ruthless realities when I came across digital technology,
waiting for me there in the uncharted wilds into which I had
entered. I was not an engineer; I did not understand theworkings of the technology, had no idea what made it cuttingedge. I merely took hold of the simple hope it offered, inmuch the same way someone needing to survive might grasp
a plow and hoe, or nails and a hammer.

We humans value communication by language anddesire to manipulate it to the utmost of our skills
precisely because it is the means that comes most easily
to us. From the countless available words that swirl
around us like stars in the night sky, we have no trouble
plucking out the ones we need to say what we want tosay. No other tool we have yet been given holds such
powerful, such endless possibilities. At Voyager we
propose to make the new ebook technology serve thepurposes of language and freedom. Doing so will surely
bring vast changes. These changes will not be about
devices or other technology, but rather about closing as
much as possible the gap that now separates the realmsof reading versus creating what people read. All readers
are equally potential authors seeking to give their own
testament to the times they live in. Our hope is foreveryone to be able to express this part of themselves, asa natural outgrowth of being human. In that sense,

The first pamphlet my colleagues and I put out after starting
Voyager Japan declared, “Somewhere in the world, someone
wants to read your book.” To reiterate what I wrote then, inslightly adapted form:
Electronic publishing was born to answer the hope of
those who believe that someone, somewhere, is waiting
for their book. It was born to assuage thedisappointment of those who sorrow realizing their bookwill not reach many others. We abandoned the great
human inventions of paper and printing to make thehard choice of reading on cold, unfeeling machines
because we could not forsake letting voices be heard evenwhen they had no commercial potential. The world may
not embrace all the creative human endeavors that are
put before it, but even what is cast aside contains things
that cannot be forgotten. Our mission at Voyager is tocarry those messages by any and all means possible. Thatis our reason for turning to the new technology.
Moveable type was also but a crude and fledgling
invention when it was introduced five centuries ago. The
humanists of the Renaissance loved their parchment andhand-copied manuscripts and disdained printed books.
Print publishing at the time was indeed a meager tool,This Voyager Japan pamphlet from the early 1990s opens witha declaration headed “Somewhere in the world, someone wants
to read your book.”3

money on ebooks, and not that they gained new possibilities
for participating in the medium. The only things that reallyadvanced are the setups for getting people to open theirwallets.
Yet even these setups hardly make it easy for readers toregister, let alone buy. Their ever-so-fancy systems areendlessly crashing or being invaded by hackers. At the sametime, digital rights management (DRM) protections arepreventing just as many people as ever from being able toread what they have bought; the more these protections arestrengthened, the more ebooks will become subject to control
by systems dominated by only a few vendors. It’s the same aspaying money to own a book but having it come dragging
ropes and chains—only you can’t see them.

Novelist Toson Shimazaki selfpublished Hakai in 1905 as thefirst work in his private imprint,
Ryokuin Sosho. The frontispieceis by the artist Kiyokata Kaburaki.

electronic publishing is a tool waiting to benefit all thosein the midst of grappling with the struggle called life.
In the opening pages of his novel Hakai (The Broken
Commandment), Toson Shimazaki acknowledges two men
who helped finance the work’s publication:

The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization based in San
Francisco that aims to build an archive for the digital age. Aspart of promoting digitization of information resources, thegroup participates in electronic publishing including throughits Open Library project, which makes mostly public-domain
publications available on EPUB, MOBI, DAISY, and PDF,
among other formats. When asked in an interview about
DRM and ebooks, organization founder Brewster Kahle had
this to say:This book came into the world through the generosity of
Keiji Hata in Hakodate and Takeshi Kozu in Shinano.
On this day, having concluded my writing, I dedicate mytale to these two benefactors.
Such a statement would obviously have been unnecessary
had the novel gone through a commercial publisher; it isthere because Toson issued it himself under his private
imprint, Ryokuin Sosho. On the day the books arrived fromthe bindery, or so the story goes, the novelist accompanied aloaded cart distributing the copies himself. No doubt along
the way he helped push the cart forward as well.

We looked at the people who were downloading andborrowing ebooks from the Internet Archive, andborrowing books through the Open Library site, and, ofthe people that found an ebook they wanted to borrow,[already] had [their local] library card, logged in, clickedto get the download going, of the people that got that
far, less than half of them successfully got the book tolaunch. This is using Adobe Digital Editions software,
which is free and pretty good [in terms of DRM]. That’s
an awful lot of frustrated readers. I think we have to dosecurity differently. It’s one of the things I like aboutbooks in browsers. It will always be possible to steal a

The anecdote reminds us that the dawn will never comeabout on its own, not at least in this new era of publishing.
Whether push or pull, we need to consciously pioneer ourown way.

❖ “Year one” for Japanese ebooks: Did
anything change?
The above-described aspirations with which we at Voyager
entered digital publishing—the indelible mix of hope anddisappointment that prompted us to seek that world—arethings I am convinced we must never let go from our hearts.
In Japan, several high-profile business breakthroughs caused
2010 to be touted as “year one” of electronic publishing. But
did anything actually change in those twelve months, when
we think in light of the visions for the new publishing wehave been keeping alive these long years? True, ebooks soldrelatively well. That, however, only says that readers spent

The Internet Archive seeks to preserve the entire range ofcultural artifacts available on the Internet, from photos andmoving images to audio recordings, books, and web pages.

4library book, and the diligent will do it. But the way
we’re doing security now just makes it difficult forreaders.
Three components need to be provided for readers to gain
access to ebooks: devices for reading (i.e., hardware), ebook
content (software) in the appropriate device formats, andvendors for distributing that content. The components may
exist separately or in tandem. Looking around at the ebook
market in Japan, we can therefore see major corporations in
the three fields rushing to launch new companies or form
partnerships as all—hardware, software, distribution—vie togain the upper hand. These ventures are premised on theInternet—on its existence as a basic and widely available
infrastructure. And indeed, if we think more deeply, theInternet more than anything else deserves to be focused on as
the key digital-publishing resource belonging equally to every
member of society.

At the May 2011 BookExpo America in New York, Amazon.com
showcased its strategies for supporting indie publishing by new
authors.

somewhat more modest voice. Unless one is famous it isdifficult to make books sell, which explains why the market
today is inundated with titles by popular authors, not tomention television stars and celebrity athletes. In thescramble for bestsellers, the true purpose of publishing—thatof empowering minority voices—seems to have been all but
forgotten.
Recognizing the trap into which print publishing has fallen,
will digital publishing, too, only repeat the same mistake? Of
all the ebook publishing and vending projects introduced by
big-name Japanese corporations to so much fanfare during“year one,” in my opinion not a single example overturned
the premises of the old order or presented a vision for what
digital publishing truly means for readers.

Much ink has been spilled over the latest ebook news, andnumerous devices have come onto the market along withvarious systems of distribution and sale. The parties behindthese enterprises may believe they are putting the customer
first. Yet the reality is that they all fail to see readers asanything more than purchasers. Despite the switch frompaper to digital, control of publishing continues to lie in thesame old hands, with readers being fed novels and mangafrom sure-selling authors that they are expected to shell out
for, but nothing else. There is no leeway whatsoever forreaders themselves to participate.

Of course, people are perfectly free to make money as they
wish; no one can stop them. That is why readers and their
allies need now more than ever to put their resources
together in defense of their own cause.
❖ Ebook formats belong to everyone

Readers, however, have a role to play beyond buying books.
Not merely an audience for others’ works, they are also
authors with their own stories to tell. The only difference
between them and “professional” writers is that as ananonymous member of the public the average reader has a

Each ebook device supports one or a few formats. Each ebook(i.e., content package), then, needs to be readied in a format
corresponding to its target device. Many different formats
have been developed over the years, Voyager’s dotbook(.book) among them.
Today the world is moving toward a shared and standardized
format for ebooks. This is part of the process of endowing
ebooks with universality, a quality they must gain if they areto spread and initiate a true dawn in the market. In that
context, the time has clearly come for our company to also
push .book along to the next stage, notwithstanding the solid
reputation the product has enjoyed for its Japanese-language
display capabilities since it was introduced in the early daysof electronic publishing. We no longer live in an age when
individuals or companies can draw proprietary boundaries
around digital publishing, which is a social resource belonging

The author (right) shakes hands with Internet Archive founder
Brewster Kahle at the organization’s headquarters in San
Francisco. In 2010, Voyager entered into an agreement to join
the Internet Archive’s work to establish a desirable electronicpublishing infrastructure.

5

to all. Thus .book will expand its scope to match the world
move toward universality. Having reached the end of its
original goals, it will assume the new task of taking electronic
publishing to the next horizon.

minimize format differences within Japan so as to smooth theway toward eventually guaranteeing compatibility with theworld standard as currently represented by EPUB. Voyager
has accordingly been working within the project to develop aJapanese ebook interchange format, already clearing manygoals in the process. By applying this format to their existing
files, publishers can rest assured their data will never turnincompatible. The format of course helps convert .book to
XMDF (another major Japanese ebook format developed by
the Sharp Corporation) and vice versa, while also enabling
both to be switched to EPUB3. No matter what is adopted in
the end as the world standard, the tools are there to meet it
immediately. The next issue to be addressed, then, is what
reading system should be used to display content
standardized through EPUB3 or other common international
format.

EPUB3 has so far been the most visible of the international
attempts to establish a standard ebook format. It is still too
early to say whether EPUB3 will in fact become the standard.
What can be said, though, is that even if it is replaced, its
attainments will definitely be acknowledged and reflected bywhat follows, seeing as EPUB represents the culmination of
fervent efforts by participants from all around the world tonegotiate a consensus.
Those participants include, from Japan, the Electronic Book
Publishers Association of Japan (EBPAJ), the Japan
Electronic Publishing Association (JEPA), Sony, Dai Nippon
Printing, Toppan Printing, Sharp, Impress, Infocity, East,
and Voyager. The members from outside Japan, too, cover
the entire range of major ebook organizations and businesses
from throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. The
roster alone is enough to give a measure of the impact thatthe direction EPUB takes will have on the ebook world.

❖ Toward Books in Browsers
Until now reading systems have been developed as
applications for specific hardware devices or operating
systems. They are customized to those environments, andhence belong to what are called “native apps.”
Native apps for Apple and Android, to give two examples, areeach based on entirely different technology. Programming
apps for multiple devices demands significant time andenergy. But as long as certain pieces of hardware dominate
the market, and riding on their success brings good sales,
everyone so far has been all too willing to put up with theirrequirements through sheer force of labor. Indeed, we allseem to be under the illusion that being able to do sosomehow proves our capability.

Meanwhile in Japan, the three ministries of Internal Affairs
and Communications (MIC), Economy, Trade and Industry(METI), and Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology (MEXT) have responded to world trends by
jointly calling on ebook-affiliated bodies to come together
into a forum to discuss industry concerns. One outgrowth ofthese discussions has been the Ebook Interchange Format
Standardization Project.
Japanese publishers are already amassing a considerable store
of digital files of their publications. The aim of the format
standardization project is to streamline this data andOnce a piece of hardware finds success, along with its apps
and the outlets vending content for those apps, the parties
behind the enterprise will inevitably grow aggressive. Having
become the “winners,” they will begin censoring content,
revising fee schedules, and otherwise serving their own
interests while placing greater and greater restrictions onusers.
Can freedom of publishing really survive under suchcircumstances? That question has long troubled those of us
in the ebook industry. Many have therefore joined in thequest to lift electronic publishing as quickly as possible to thenext level, away from a proprietary environment gripped by a
few businesses to one where everyone in society can shareand join hands without borders.

Yoshinobu Noma, president of the Kodansha publishingcompany and representative director of EBPAJ, delivers a
keynote speech at the May 2011 IDPF Digital Book conferencein New York, where the International Digital Publishing Forum
released the final draft of EPUB3.

6

Among the groups of people most alive to this issue are thoseseeking to connect electronic publishing to “social reading,” aform of communicative reading that lets users take advantage
of ebook functions such as excerpting and margin notes toshare thoughts about a book with a specified or unspecified
set of fellow readers. The amazing spread of social media like
Twitter and Facebook leaves no doubt that the digital
reading experience, too, will become linked to such modes ofsocial communication. For social reading to be true to its
name, books need to be viewable online on a web browser,
since everyone must be able to share them totallyunhampered by walls or restrictions. A web browser
guarantees that shareability.

both readers and publishers.
Such browser-based reading systems are known as “Books in
Browsers.” Many examples are already beginning to appear in
North America.
❖ Digital publishing, for whom?
Asked what publishing should be in the digital age, I havealways stressed that it should be something people encourageand trust themselves to take into their own hands—that noone else is going to do the work for them. Now more thanever is the time for everyone to passionately and energeticallyengage with the new world of publishing. This isn’t ascomplicated as it sounds. People can begin simply by acting
on what they now most want to say and pass on to the rest ofsociety. That element—the what of writing—is and always
will remain the be-all and end-all of publishing, digital orotherwise. We at Voyager, in turn, will continue to challenge
ourselves to discover how we can assist people in their quest.
Of course, we are not so ingenuous as to fail to imagine that
there will be things we can and absolutely cannot do. Evenso, our hope is to be responsible for a publishing mediumthat may not be very flashy, but is down-to-earth, affordable,
flexible, resilient, and able to stand close to ordinary people
as they exercise their modest everyday resourcefulness.

This dimension has turned the spotlight on HTML5-based
reading systems, which support the latest standardized web
technologies. The newest web standard, HTML5 comprises acluster of resources including cascading style sheets (CSS)and JavaScript. These technologies incorporate the Internet
community’s shared accumulation of experience handlingissues like accessibility, security, and compatibility. They
moreover do not belong to any one enterprise, but are free
and open for everyone to use.
Once reading systems become standard equipment on web
browsers, enjoying ebooks will become just as easy as
accessing the Internet. Readers will no longer need to worry
over which hardware to use, because every choice will carry a
web browser. Whether one is reading on an iPhone, Android,or Kindle, the text will be automatically optimized for display
on that browser. All this promises a lot less frustration for

In closing, I would like to introduce one ebook written by a
man who passed away following fifty years as a movie
cameraman. The foreword I wrote for that work puts apersonal face on the kind of people I believe digitalpublishing is there to serve:
On December 16, 2010, Hisahiko Fukui passed away,
although the news did not reach me until a while later.
I received Fukui’s manuscript for this book about two
years before his death. I had met him at a party, where
he noted to me somewhat self-effacingly that while what
he had written might seem a little too specialist and onesided, it was still his attempt to express the world he had
known in his own words. The computer-typed
manuscript arrived in due course. I did not get around tohaving it published, though, and then came the news of
his death.

SocialBook is a social-reading platform currently being
developed by partners from the United States, Europe, China,
and Japan, including Voyager. Reading is shifting today frompage to screen. The SocialBook project was launched in the
belief that putting our members’ experience and expertise
toward exploring the necessary concerns is the fitting next stepto our two decades of involvement with electronic publishing.

Having worked in the movie industry from my twenties
to mid-thirties, I myself know many professionals in thefield—“film men,” to borrow Fukui’s phrasing. One by
one over the past few years these aging former colleagues
7have been taking leave of the world. Many before theydie endeavor to leave some testament behind, fumbling
for the right words, struggling over the unaccustomed
task of piecing them into prose. Although versed in theart of making images sing most eloquently, in writingthese men evidence an almost adolescent awkwardness.
Still, the earnest emotion behind their words comesthrough for all to see; their prose shines with a wondrous
innocence that stems if anything from their youthlike
inexperience. How can society be made to open up
greater chances for these and other now-unheeded voices
to be heard? I urge every one of you to help find theanswer. My fellows and I, too, pledge to join in theeffort.

Katsudoya gojunen (Fifty
Ye a r s a s a F i l m M a n ) ,cinematographer Hisahiko
Fukui’s remarkably personalaccount of living throughthe declining years ofJapanese moviemaking,unfortunately became
his last work. Available inJapanese for 300 yen plus
sales tax at the Risoh Shoten
ebook store (http://voyagerstore.com/risohshoten).

All this grand talk, however, has not kept me fromwasting time and preventing Fukui’s work from reaching
fruition before it was too late, for which I must
apologize. To him I sincerely say I’m sorry. And to you,the readers, I offer this tardy fruit in the hopes you willtake a gentle taste.

NETTOWAAKUJIDAI NO SHUPPAN SAIHAKKENTranslated by Chikako IMOTO

8

What will change with EPUB3?
Development Division, Voyager Japan, Inc.



Toshiaki KOIKE
ExpandedBook Tool Kit II in 1995. In this same year, theJapanese publishing house Shinchosha released theShinchocha 100 Book Series (Shincho Bunko no Hyaku
Satsu) using the ExpandedBook software. At the time, thestandard was a 13 inch, 72dpi, 640x480 pixel display, and so
the design was for this type of monitor, which could display
not only ebooks, but any kind of multimedia content. But, achange was soon to come: the profusion of larger screens andthe internet.

❖T he development of electronic books inJapanese
Voyager’s ebook
Beginning last year, we frequently started hearing the term
“The First Year of the Ebook”. But the Japanese electronic
book has a much longer history than that. Voyager’s“dotbook(.book)” and SHARP’s XMDF both have nearly ten
years history. And, this history is not just one of viewer andformat; it is also a history of publishers engaged in electronic
publishing.
Voyager had its start in electronic publishing with the
ExpandedBook beginning in 1993. The ExpandedBook ofthis era was based on the Apple Macintosh hypercard
software. Since it displayed text only horizontally, it was notentirely appropriate for Japanese books, but it was a first stepin reading digitized books via a computer screen.

Text reflow
Recently, the terms text reflow and fixed layout have comeinto circulation. Reflow describes how, in addition tochanging the window and font size, a page itself can bechanged, altering the number of lines on the page, or the sizeof the letters on a single line. Fixed layout refers to the idea
of maintaining the same content regardless of page size,
similar to a PDF. As screen sizes change, text reflow in digitalpublishing has become essential.

Then, in pursuit of particular Japanese textual features suchas vertical text display, ruby pronunciation indicators, andJapanese punctuation marks, Voyager released theWith this in mind, Voyager’s viewer application, T-Time andthe digital publishing tool .book was created to meet thisneed. The .book application can meet both reader and

The Need for Small Media, published with ExpandedBook

The Need for Small Media, published with .book

9

Using existing modes of Japanese language publication
This project is of note because a large body of publisher dataon ebooks was analyzed based on actual tests, and thisfeedback on the use of formats was used to increase precision.

publisher needs.
Ebooks, which use media entirely differently and have thepossibility of text reflow, are completely different fromprinted books. What, then, is the best way to display
content? Through trial and error, new viewers, formats, andcontent have developed based on the possibilities of text
reflow, but still incorporating the layout principles of paper
books.

As stated earlier, existing Japanese electronic publishing was
the result of trial and error. There were attempts to makeelectronically published content appear as much as possible
like print publishing. Even if it could not appear exactly thesame, people wanted to be able to markup content the same
way as before. Ebook interchangeable format was createdwith that in mind. With the interchangable, generic format,
one can move between the delivery (reader’s format), in
which “noise” such as markup and other information has
been removed, and a format that preserves various
information, including markup.

❖ Japanese ebook interchange format
Japanese ebook interchange format standardization project
Tens of thousands of titles were created with .book and
XMDF. The term ebook has spread, and the market has
expanded, but, as sales have increased, creating for different
formats has become an issue. With this in mind, the Japanese
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, theMinistry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science andTechnology (MEXT), and the Ministry of Economy, Tradeand Industry (METI) promoted the Ebook Interchange
Format Standardization Project as part of its project:
Discussion on Developing the Practical and Profitable Use of
Electronic Publishing in a Digital Society.

Ebook interchange format
Ebook interchange format was intentionally designed forinterchangability; it is not a delivery format, and it isdifferent from either .book or XMDF. Depending on widelyused technologies, like XHTML or CSS based notation, it ispossible to easily change formats. On the other hand, it ispossible to add other capabilities not available with XHTML■ Ebook interchange format“Interchange Format”
package.xml“Interchange Format” composition of files and folders“Interchange Format”
content document10

was designed from the beginning to maintain the openness ofHTML, web browsers or software; similarly, mobile devices
and PC software can also access offline by downloading;
XHTML is the standard. EPUB3 greatly expands thecapabilities of EPUB2. The particular characteristics include:*Core content vocabulary based on HTML5*In order to expand support of global languages, verticaltext display is included as well as the ability to use rubypronunciation indicators.
*Significantly improved metadata*Support for MathML (ability to display mathematicalsymbols)
With the expansion of the ability to display in these ways,
there is also an expansion of the following rich media:*Video and audio support*Synchronized text and audio function*SVG support*Java script support

or CSS. In a package. xml file, this describes theconfiguration file (manifest) or display sequence (spine).
In terms of content document, XML files are written with
XHTML-based syntax, while the styles are written with CSSbased syntax. The method for packaging (or archiving) as canbe done with EPUB is not regulated.

❖ EPUB3
Background of EPUB3
At this point, it is useful to consider developments aroundthe world. While the goal of ebook interchangeable format
was a generic format that was, in fact, interchanageable,
EPUB had delivery (reader’s format) as its intent. Of course,
there are examples where EPUB was used for ebook
interchange format as well. But most people expected that if
they used EPUB, they could deliver content anywhere with a
global standard.

All in all, the expansion covers substantial ground. For the
publishing world in Japan, the ability to display text verticallyand to display ruby represents a noticeable improvement over

EPUB is the format recommended by the standardizationgroup IDPF (International Digital Publishing Forum), and it■ EPUB3
EPUB3 package file

EPUB3 content document

EPUB3 composition of files and folders. The files
are archived as a zip file.

11

from ebook interchange format, package.xml, global settings,
and bibliography files to EPUB3 Package Document (.opf),
from style to a CSS file, and from XML file to HTML5 file.
Here, we can recommend a sensible change. “Sensible” heremeans that at a minimum, we should make the largest
number of functions available to the greatest extent possible,
in any format and on any platform. The point is, to make thestructure with intention from the beginning.
Specifically, this means mentioning the following:*The use of a style sheet*The structure of chapter, page, and section should beclear from headings
In addition, the following items are also important:*When using the same notation (that is, font size, etc.),
even if various methods are used, there should always be
one unified method.
*When user specified characters are used, create acomment using Unicode so that the information will bepreserved regardless of the format.

The Need for Small Media, published with EPUB

what had been available before.
.book/Ebook interchangable format/EPUB3
EPUB3 was a substantial improvement and has the potential
to set the standard in the future. However, with the functionsof EPUB3 just being developed, there is still not widespread
use by viewers, and in Japanese digital publishing, for theforeseeable future the EPUB3 will be used with the present
formats and will continue to exist. Ebook interchange format
will continue to exist in that margin.

In this way, Voyager is creating a new reading system: Books
in Browsers, using .book, which includes needed features, andEPUB3 as a reading platform.

❖ Books in Browsers powered by Voyager

But there is no reason to stand by. By using .book, andresponding to necessity, we can convert the files to EPUB3.
Ebook interchange format is an important tool to effect thatconversion. We can easily change the format, for example,

What is “Books in Browsers”?
Books in Browsers is a general term for a reading system thatuses a web browser.

■ Books in Browsers

A Journey Through Post-War Mass Communication,
presented in vertical text

A Journey Through Post-War Mass
Communication, presented in horizontal
text

12

Screen capture of Mincho web font displayed on an
AndroidAt Voyager, browsers have included T-Time Plugin and
T-Time Crochet, which are plugins that function similarly to
web-based browsers with plugins. But, when we use the term
Books in Browsers, a special plugin is not required; it uses
standards for web browsers, and with a regular browser
installed, one can read on a PC, smart phone, or tablet. With
this, a reader can seamlessly move from purchase of an ebook
to reading it, all on a web browser. Viewer vendors have noneed to design apps for each device, and can therefore
respond to the ever increasing proliferation of platforms.

Canvas is an HTML5 function, and was developed to creategraphics in browsers. Using this function, text created using
T-Time can be displayed using a browser. In addition, .bookand EPUB3 can also be displayed.

Voyager’s Books in Browsers
Displaying on the web generally means depending on a web
display engine. Safari and Google Chrome run on the web
engine called WebKit, and EPUB readers widely use those
two. However, using these for reading ebooks has a downside.
When changes are made in the display, etc., the text may
change unexpectedly. Even if it isn’t extreme, the quality canvary depending on the version.

Mincho (East Asian serif typeface) or JIS X 0213, which areused in Japanese books and are difficult to display on smart
phones, can also be displayed using web fonts.

Ebook interchange format can also be interchanged with
EPUB3 in real time via a server and displayed. It can react touser needs including changing font size, window size, andmoving between vertical and horizontal text display asneeded, as well as text reflow and expansion.

With a web browser device that can handle HTML5, theworld of multimedia opens up easily, regardless of the
hardware—PC, smart phones like iPhone, iPad, or Android,
tablets--and regardless of the OS or retail seller. Voyager
advocates this approach.

Voyager, which has continued to pursue excellence in text
display, believes that is it possible, with its T-Time and .Book
products, to avoid dependence on browser engines andplugins to achieve expansion. “Canvas” is the way to do this.

EPUB3 DE NANI GA KAWARUNOKATranslated by Gretchen Jones

13

VOYAGER TIMELINE
1998.7"T-Time Internet Vertical Writing and Reading Method" (Hybrid edition) was released, a viewer
converting HTML files into book-like text in vertical with PC.

1998.10Adapted TTZ file, dedicated to T-Time, predecessor of dotbook (.book) file format.

2000.6

Adapted .book file format.
Adapted T-TimePlug: .book/vertical reading and browsing system for web browsers. Made it
possible for distributers to administrate the reading time on web browsers.

2000.9".book" was adopted as the standard ebook format in the "PABURI electronic library", thecollaborative electronic bookstore of 4 major publishing companies (KADOKAWA GROUP
PUBLISHING, Kodansha, SHUEISHA, SHINCHOSHA Publishing).
Opened the homepage of "Risoh Shoten" (Risoh Bookstore meaning "Ideal Bookstore"), an ebook
specialized bookstore.

2001.9Announced T-Time in WinCE/Pocket PC version.

2002.3Cooperated with Architump. Announced "T-Break", a software that makes .book readable with
"Pook", the company’s Palms software.

2004.4

Announced "T-bridge", an on-demand printing system via PDF.

2005.3

Announced T-Time 5.5 with new function of exporting on-screen images.

2006.2

Implemented low-vision mode in T-Time. Made it possible for visually handicapped persons
to read .book with the selective modes of size of letters, brightness reflection and magnifying
glass.

2006.10

Made T-Time operate together with "Denshi-Kataribe", a talking software, which made it
possible to orally read .book.
Cooperated with CELSYS and INFOCITY. Adapted "BookSurfing", a synthetic viewer for mobile
phones. Started distributing .book files changed over to files of BookSurfing format.

2008.5

Announced T-Time Crochet. Distributed .book files in installment and coded way. Realized a
distributing system for high capacity contents, such as comics, that can instantly respond tousers' requests regarding the display.

2008.7

Released T-Time adapted to iPhone. Started providing comic books for iPhone and iPod touchin App Store.

2008.11.book became readable by PC-Talker, a screen reader software for visually handicapped personusing PC.

2009.7Adapted "Risoh BookViewer", an iPhone version application, to deal in .book files in Risoh
Bookstore. Started distributing .book files on PC&iPhone.

2010.6

Adapted Risoh Shoten to iPad and released "Voyager Books", a viewer app for iPad.

2010.12Opened "Voyager Store", the shopping mall including new direct management shop "altbook".
"Risoh Shoten" won "Online Service Prize" in Japan Electronic Publishing Association Electronic
Publishing Award (JEPA).

2011.3"Toyo Keizai Shinpo-sha Store" opened as the 3rd bookstore in Voyager Store.

2011.5"Gutenberg21 Store" opened as the 4th bookstore in Voyager Store.

2011.7"Harlequin Comics Store" opened as the 5th bookstore in Voyager Store.

14

Ebook for everyone!!
Wish for reading of persons with reading disabilities
Vice Chief Director, BRC (Barrier-free documents Resources Center)Susumu MATSUI
welfare, not customer, for who consent to braille or readingtranslation, font enlargement and so on are asked. However,ebooks have a possibility of evolution to a tool for singlehanded reading by combination with supporting tools such asrecitation by TTS (Text-to Speech), screen zoom function
and braille display. If the condition that accessibility anduniversal design are secured is fulfilled, it is possible that we,persons with reading disabilities, can be “customer” and canemerge from the cover of welfare.

❖ Introduction
Publication technology of Gutenberg has brought many
people the gospel, but for us, totally blind persons, a printed
book is just a bundle of papers we can perceive only its
smooth or rough touch; it is a barrierful publication we canmake out no contents at all but difference of its materials.
It is not too much to say that practically it is almost
impossible to realize a universal design of paper books;
however, it is not so difficult to secure accessibility of ebooks.
ebooks have the potential to enable those who cannot read as
they like to choose one by themselves and to enjoy reading at
will, like now I do at least. In this article, I will introduce thepresent situation, future problems and prospects ofaccessibility of ebooks.

❖ About standard format of ebooks
To secure compatibility of ebooks, “EPUB” was settled to be
the standard format; in 2007, IDPF (International Digital
Publishing Forum) announced EPUB 2.0 as the standard
format of ebooks. In 2008 it gained support from publishers
associations of the US and the UK, and it was successively
adopted by Google and Nook in 2009 and by iBooks in2010.

❖ Visually impaired persons and reading
At first, how do visually impaired persons in Japan doreading? There is a history that braille libraries, public
libraries, volunteer groups and other associations have madebraille and talking books, and have loaned them to users for
decades. Recently lending by public transmission has been
available as PC and the Internet spread; you can read a book
you want to read by listening on “Sapie Library” (provided
by Information Service for Visually Impaired Persons) andalso can borrow one by mail from the information service
institute you have made a registration for.

As a result, EPUB became the actual standard format of
ebook in the English-speaking countries. Furthermore, publicdraft of EPUB 3.0 in which functions peculiar to Japanese
language are incorporated was revealed by IDPF in February
2011, which is expected to be the standard format in Japan.
This standard format of digital publishing is designed with amind to accessibility from the beginning and it has been
decided that EPUB 3.0 will entirely be adapted to DAISY
4.0. By the way, this DAISY was originally standardized as
the international format of digital talking books for visually
impaired persons by an international nonprofit organization,
DAISY Consortium; recently it has progressed to accessible
and universal ebook format in harmony with persons withvarious reading disabilities such as developmental disability,
learning disability and mental disability.

Besides, the revised Copyright Act (especially Article 37,
Section 3) which came into force on January 1, 2010legalized copy and public transmission to users by “othermethods necessary for the use of such persons with visualdisabilities”, in addition to braille and reading translation; it
enabled to copy more various media, too.

Moreover, it shows how important accessibility is consideredin the digital publishing world in the US that a totally blindengineer, George Kerscher, who is also secretary general of

For a publishing company, it seems that so far we, persons
with reading disabilities, have been people covered by15

of Adobe Content Server, Google eBooks cannot be read withsupport tools under the present conditions. As for ebook
reading devices made in Japan, no terminal equipped withJapanese TTS has been released yet; future development ofaccessibility-secured ebook reading devices is awaited.

DAISY Consortium, serves as the current president of IDPF.

❖C urrent situation of voice-enabled ebook
reading devices
Also in Japan, last year was called the first year of ebooks
again after several times, and various ebook reading devices
have been released one after another. And also, there are somany ebook formats now; it is necessary to standardize themas soon as possible.

❖ For coexistence of DRM and accessibility
For whom do books exist? Even with disabilities to read,everybody has the same desire to read books. At the sametime with protecting copyright from illegal copy by DRM(Digital Rights Management), it is an important issue tosecure accessibility of ebook reading devices, too.
Accessibility is realized by collaboration of universal designand support technologies.

Actually also in Japan, while it will have been more than ayear after it was much rumored that Kindle would come likethe Black Ships, the voice of expecting Kindle is heard amongsome of the people who hope to realize accessibility of
ebooks, too.

It is understandable that DRM is important, but securing
accessibility should be assigned higher priority; and needlessto say, everyone’s “reading right” is the priority. I suppose itis an urgent need to prevent construction of a system that
obstructs readers’ usability or accessibility and shuts out
support technology by excessive DRM.

In the US which is a developed country of ebooks, the second
latest generation of Kindle, Kindle DX, had already had atext reading function by speech synthesis but it was notcapable with function of reading out menu and navigation
control by voice; therefore National Federation of the Blind(NFB), a membership organization of visually impaired
persons in the US, and American Council of the Blind (ACB)
considered that using Kindle DX in class puts visually
impaired persons at a disadvantage in the aspect of
information access, and declared that students with visualdisabilities would be discriminated against by using Kindle,
on the basis of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
which prohibits discrimination based on disabilities.

I would appreciate your cooperation to realize anenvironment that everyone can read ebooks.

DENSHISHOSEKI WA SUBETE NO HITO NI YOMERU HON NI
NARIURU!! ─DOKUSHO SHOGAISHA KARA NO NEGAI

Translated by Narumi SATO

As a result, while it is a thin and light ebook reading device of
only 8.5mm in thickness and 282g in weight, Kindle 3 cameto have TTS reading function within and to be equipped with
control navigation function, though it is insufficient yet; itbecame capable with accessibility to some degree.

Susumu MATSUI

Born in 1971, in Chiba Prefecture. Now
employed by Chiba Prefecture Western
Library. The author of several works
including “Q&A Guide Dog”. (On Risoh
Shoten, “Digital Picture Book: A Day ofAndrew the Guide Dog” is now on sale.)
He has been working on lectures aboutvisually impaired persons and guide dogs,
and on activities aimed at realization of
barrier-free publishing.

Besides, iPad and iPhone have a screen reader called
VoiceOver as default factory equipment, but currently it is
impossible to read iBooks by voice. Anyway, even in the US,
other ebook reading devices such as Sony Reader or Nook are
currently not accessible at all; future measures are being
expected.
Android smartphone is lagging behind iPhone; due to DRM

16

Bricklaying ten thousand public files under the blue sky
Aozora Bunko

Michio TOMITA

Aozora Bunko* is a text archive project that began in 1997.
The collection includes two types of works: those whose
copyrights had expired and become of public domain; andthose that copyright holders agree to make freely available
while their rights still run valid.
Out-of-copyright works are typed in and proofread byvolunteers. “Shanghai” by Riichi Yokomitsu marked the ten
thousandth (10,000th) file, archived by a total of 800
volunteers who passed the baton for this project. Voyager
Japan, Inc., an exhibitor at the eBook Expo and creator ofthis booklet, was prominently involved in the inception andevolution of Aozora Bunko.

Original ExpandedBook based on HyperCard. Although it was
localized to Japanese, the original typesetting functions weremeager in horizontal text layout only. Yet, many were attracted
to the idea to “create by yourself”.

❖Y ear 1990 ― the first year of electronic bookera

Several people, including Mr. Masaaki Hagino who was, fromthe developer’s end at Pioneer exploring ways to use
LaserDisk as media, responded to this movement. They
established a sister company of Voyager in Japan and set out
to localize ExpandedBook to Japanese.

With Google Book Search, Amazon Kindle, Apple’s iPads
and iPhones becoming widely acknowledged, year 2010 was
marked the first year of the ebook era. But for the founding
people of Voyager Japan and those who called for Aozora
Bunko, however, the “first year” had happened nearly 20
years ago.

At the time, circulation of paper books was still maintaining
peak level. Yet, a certain group of “underdogs” that were inlack of footholds in publishing sought a more accessible
alternative solution in digital. Being a struggling writer
myself, I had hopes to leave behind my own books that hadgone out of print in the form of ExpandedBook.

It all started out from an idea of using HyperCard, aMacintosh-based card-style information management system,
to simulate the page of a book.
Voyager in the United States was exploring ways to offer
unique films using high-capacity digital media and laser discs
developed by Pioneer. The company conducted anexperiment in the early 1990’s. They streamed text data into
HyperCard, added a flip page function as reader interface,and named it ExpandedBook. By using the multimediacompatible HyperCard, they were able to install images,
sounds and videos in addition to text. With this project,
Voyager started providing electronic publishing services. The
company also developed an authoring system that would
enable users to produce their own ebooks.

The first generation ExpandedBook was rather meager as
platform for the Japanese typesetting system. Voyager Japan
parted from HyperCard and rebuilt the entire system fromscratch, completely transforming in 1995. Page size was
expanded, compatibility with the typesetting systemenhanced, and ingenuities to show fonts smoothly wereadded. The quality was so impressive that Shinchosha
Publishing decided to use this system to create their“Shincho Bunko 100” on CD-ROM and subsequently soldthem in series.
Prior to this, Sony developed its own ebook standards
17electronic bookstores and electronic libraries was ready.
There was much excitement about both, naturally among
those who were familiar with the bookmaking tool
ExpanededBook.
At that time, what possessed Mr. Eiji Noguchi then at
Voyager Japan was the idea of elibrary.
“If we can get files that are out of copyright, we can type inthe data ourselves. We can always call for someone to workwith us. There are literature and Japanese language scholars
who are putting up their works on the Web. Let’s ask them if
we can have access. Maybe some of them would want to post
their own works. We want to make it so they are properly
readable, so we should make it in ExpandedBook format andline them up. It would also be a good advertisement for thecompany, so we’ll ask Voyager to spare us some space on
their server. It won’t cost us anything. We can start rightaway. Let’s just do it!”Second generation ExpandedBook, remade to handle Japanesetypesetting requirements. Became compatible with complex
typesetting with vertical text layout and ruby. Shows the
opening of an installed video.

focusing mainly on dictionaries, approached publishinghouses to use the format for publishing on 8cm CD-ROMs,
and began marketing readers/players starting in 1990. NEC,in 1993, launched a 3.5-inch floppy disc digital book player,
which was something akin to Kindle’s ancestor. In
comparison to these efforts in which device manufacturers
created their own standards to approach publishers,
ExpandedBook was unique in that it opened up the world of
bookmaking to the public.

In the summer of 1997, in a little corner of Voyager’s server,
an ExpandedBook library Aozora Bunko was born. It started
out with a bare lineup of five works entered by Mr. Akihiro
Okajima, a faculty at Fukui University at that time.
❖ ExpandedBook ― from library to text archive
Ebooks have multimedia and interactive capabilities. Voyager
Japan could have chosen to continue pursuing functional
enhancements along their conventional product line.

Neither of these endeavors actually resulted in expanding theworld of electronic publishing substantially, yet at that time,
experiments to determine what could be done by digitizing
books ― for example, improving the use of dictionaries bydigitalization, developing dedicated reading devices, andproviding things like electronic mimeographs and otherfamiliar publishing tools ― were in fact conducted repeatedly.
And in 1995, the year the new ExpandedBook was born, yetanother determinant component was brought into electronic
publishing.

However, in the face of this new situation with the Internet,
the company came up with an odd idea that seemed tonullify the raison d’etre of ExpandedBook from within.
T-Time emerged like a white book containing nothing.
Thanks to the Internet, ebooks were now instantly
deliverable to any destination and at very little cost. On topof that, the world was brimming with attractive readingmaterials. Although they were not in the form of electronic
books, they were certainly worth reading.

The Internet.
Although books were digitized, when it came to delivering
them at that time, they were still “objects” with strings
attached. There were ways to deliver files to a closed networkof PCs for each type of system, but the main circulation
continued to rely on physical distribution in the forms of
CD-ROMs and floppy discs. The Internet, once
commercialized became social infrastructure at one stretch,made this bottleneck a history.

Developers of ExpandedBook began to use the ebook
environment they themselves developed as whitebook to read
2channel website more comfortably. To read websites morethoroughly, the idea was to download the content of the
webpage and create a makeshift ebook out of it. This toolthat diverted ExpandedBook later evolved into T-Time, withwindow resizable, vertical/horizontal text switchable, and text
documents editable.

The circulation issue being resolved, the environment for18

I am not implying that the effort to utilize the multimedia
and interactive features of ebooks was “bad move” in essence.
In fact, aspired to this goal many beautiful, excellent works
were made during the experiment phase in the 1990s, andmore will continue to appear down the road. However, toconfigure such ebooks we need some software platform.
Personal computers continue to evolve; various trials todevelop electronic devices that can be used for reading areabout to begin; and environments keep changing as theycome and go. In such time and place, it is virtually impossible
to stick to a certain format and maintain compatibility all
along. Formats can become a cage that locks up literaryworks, and once we lose the energy to support the newenvironment the works may die with us from murder-suicide.

the text were set forth in the “List of Annotations” page. By
referring to this page, anyone can create texts in Aozora
Bunko format with his/her own editor. There is a display
software written for various devices that will enable users to
reproduce data according to the designated vertical text
layout with ruby. Programs to convert data into XHTML arealso listed in the “Typesetting Guide” page.
What was the consequence, after 10 years, of the crucial
decision to break away from a certain format and preservetext? Fortunately, you can see for yourselves on the device
you are using.
After ExpandedBook, Voyager Japan adopted the dotbook(.book) format, took the “undiluted solutions” of books
consisting of characters and funneled them into various
devices, established a route to reproduce them into paper
books, and contributed largely in stabilizing electronic
publishing as an industry.

If so, from the many possibilities that had been considered,
why not focus first on text? Lining up the characters side byside and adding some layout functions are just transplants ofwhat could be achieved on paper. Yet, the dramatic cost cut
in reproduction and distribution that Internet can offer issomething we can never expect with paper. The majority of
expressions and knowledge that people have accumulated
over the years pertain to paper books. By simply porting thecontents into text and putting them up on the Internet, adoor to a completely new world of books where we can accessat any time from anywhere will open.

And now, they have adopted a new idea called BookServer
advocated by Internet Archive to connect standard format
files on the bibliographic information network, all the whilepursuing their experiments around ebooks.
As I stack up more files in Aozora Bunko, I am eager to keeptab on their initiatives over five year, ten years of time towitness what kind of a new book world it will open.

In May 2002, Aozora Bunko quit providing ExpandedBook.
Instead, we pinpointed our file offerings to texts annotatedwith layout information. We focused on providing only two
formats: text and its XHTML version, which was created byconverting that text with a certain program.

*Aozora Bunko = Blue Sky Library

AOZORA NI TSUNDA KOYU FAIRU ICHIMAN
Translated by Miki TANAKA

Because Aozora Bunko stopped making ExpandedBook, for awhile its files lost the readability and the ability to reproduce
the type page. But T-Time had already proven that it waspossible to take in texts from the Internet and display themneatly on the spot. If typesetting information is recorded incomputer-processable form, the type pages can be reproducedon screen someday. Then, if so, among things that should bepreserved we decided to focus on texts that have the least riskof getting too old to open.

Michio TOMITA

Writer and originator of Aozora Bunko. His
books include “Pasokon Soseiki”, “Hon-noMirai” and “Aozora-no-Restart.”
TwitterID: aobeka
URL: http://attic.neophilia.co.jp

Instructions on how to describe typesetting information in19