Shinzi Katoh: Down the Rabbit Hole of Japanese Stationery

Some objects are made to be used, while others immediately make you want to keep them, line them up on a shelf and start a collection. Shinzi Katoh's creations often belong to both categories at once.

A Japanese illustrator, designer and author, Shinzi Katoh has spent decades creating a world filled with cats, animals, fairy-tale characters and little scenes from everyday life. His illustrations can now be found on all kinds of objects, but at Nomado Store, it is his stationery that particularly caught our eye: stickers, masking tapes, sticky notes and little boxes that are sometimes just as tempting for their packaging as for what they contain.

Much of this stationery is produced in collaboration with Seal-do, a Japanese company specialising in the printing of stickers, labels and masking tapes since 1933. Seal-do's expertise brings another dimension to Shinzi Katoh's illustrations through its choice of papers, intricate cutting and different printing techniques.

Gold foil, holographic effects and kraft paper give these products a very distinctive character. They remain simple, accessible pieces of stationery, but have that little extra something that makes you want to admire them before you even think about using them. 

Some series of flake stickers come in tiny metal tins, others are presented like miniature antique books. These are probably some of the Shinzi Katoh items we love most at Nomado Store.

Sticky notes unfurl from illustrated rolls. Some designs explore the same theme, each just different enough to make choosing between them surprisingly difficult.

You pick one. Then you notice the one next to it and that is how a collection begins.

This attention to presentation is particularly charming in the Fairy Tale Jewelry – 童話の宝石 series, whose Japanese name can be translated as "fairy-tale jewels". Stories by the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and other classics are transformed into tiny postage stamp-style stickers, kept inside boxes reminiscent of precious old books.

Seal-do beautifully describes the collection by evoking the fairy tales we read over and over again as children, before storing them somewhere deep in our memories, like jewels in a box that we occasionally feel like opening again.

Grimm and Andersen, seen from Japan
Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, The Little Mermaid or The Snow Queen: the stories are familiar. And yet, when they pass through Shinzi Katoh's pencil, something changes. It is precisely this slight shift in perception that appeals to us.

We rediscover stories deeply rooted in the European imagination, but interpreted through a Japanese visual sensibility. The slightly faded colours, typography, touches of gold and compositions sometimes feel like illustrations from an old children's book found at the back of a forgotten bookshelf. 

There is a kind of joyful nostalgia running through these collections, somewhere between vintage illustration, Japanese culture and childhood memories. They feel different and familiar at the same time. This is a world whose charm often lies in the smallest details.

We have to admit that we are particularly fond of Shinzi Katoh's cats.Perhaps because we are cat lovers ourselves, but also because of the expressionsand poses he gives them: curious, serious, mischievous or sometimes mildly unimpressed by the world around them.

They also seem to enjoy many of the things we do. We often find them surrounded by books and letters, quietly inhabiting little worlds of reading, writing and paper.

With just a few lines, Shinzi Katoh gives them a personality of their own. 

Alice… and the rabbit hole : it is difficult to talk about Shinzi Katoh's world without taking a detour through Alice in Wonderland.

Alice, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts and the mad Tea Party are reimagined across a collection of masking tapes, stickers, notebooks and little metal tins. Browsing through the collection can feel a little like approaching the rabbit hole Alice falls down before discovering Wonderland.

It is a particularly fitting metaphor for Japanese stationery. Stationery lovers know the phenomenon well: you fall down the rabbit hole and, once you're in, it can be surprisingly difficult to find your way out.

It often starts with a beautiful masking tape brought back from Japan, a few stickers to decorate a notebook, or a pen with a nib that feels exactly right…

Then you discover flake stickers. Stamps. Japanese papers. Sticky notes. Limited editions. And that little Shinzi Katoh box that happens to come in three other designs.

By then, it is probably already too late.

What we ultimately love about Shinzi Katoh may be that very fine line between a useful object and a small treasure, this is stationery made to be used and kept.

A sticker can find its way into a travel journal, onto an envelope or a gift. A masking tape can accompany a few handwritten lines. Sticky notes are made to be peeled off, stuck down and used, but once empty, you'll find that some of those little boxes remain on the desk.

This is exactly the kind of stationery we love searching for in Japan for Nomado Store: simple, well-designed objects to which an illustration, a material or an unexpected detail gives a personality of its own.

If you are only stopping by for a quick look…

See our Shinzi Kato items here.

Beware of the rabbit hole.