If the books are indeed jammed in so tightly that you can't pull them out with your finger, won't this hook damage the paperback's spine?

This is superlame and, like bubble said, probably harmful to books. To remove a book from a bookshelf you should handle it from the center and push the books to the left and right of the book you want back as you grab. At least that's how Ms. Stewart says to do it.

Yeah, totally lame. They will harm the paperbacks and seems to be too tight for hard covers. My shelves are so cramped that I even use the upper space, so this little P thingy will be in the way.
I love the designs of Japanese stationeries, but they do have a lot of useless stuff.

Hey, whatever gets the books out is fine by me! Make stronger spines!

Japan is chock full of wonderful little gadgets that many westerners don't appreciate. Very little available space in Japan with about 80% being mountainous and the rest being used for human habitation and food/good production.

I lived in slightly less than 400 sq. ft. while I was in Japan and it was considered a FAMILY apartment. Storage was at a premium. Books got shoved in all sorts of places. I would have loved having these then...

書がないね？

love'em

If your books are packed in that tight, you need to consider building more bookshelves. Aside from spine damage, I can easily see that device making divots in the top edge of the books' pages.

Oops, I guess I should have shown how I actually use them, rather than picking a book that I thought would look better with the hook. Yes, they would probably damage some books, but they work well with the thin, folded-in-half-and-bound-with-staples-type booklets and pamphlets that can get lost between larger books (and have large gaps in the middle).

Also, building more bookshelves would be great, but it's an option available only to those who have extra space (see: dragonbaq's comment).

total garbage. stupid consumerist crap that will clog landfills one day.

I like this idea. I particularly like the idea that the design supports an environmentally friendly local manufacturer.

there's nothing environmentally friendly about this. just because some marketer slaps a green leaf and an "eco" prefix on a product doesn't make it green.

So why would you need a pack of 12?

This is why evolution gave you fingers. Just pull the damn book off the shelf. Cripes.

I'm so sick of cute and clever crap that doesn't really improve life and only takes up space. What's well-designed about that?

Could we please see some design ideas that allow us to buy less stuff instead of more?

i think they look cool and functional. Especially the book mark feature.

I love Japanese culture in general, and in particular the dynamism and creativity of Japan's post-war design scene. Their embrace of modernism is (imo) more wholehearted and enthusiastic than ours in the West.

That said, I'm not digging this particular piece. No surprise it's from Osaka -- Osaka's markets are the epitome of hypercommodification. That's one of the down-sides of a highly-enthusiastic design culture: it's almost as if they design new things there simply for the joy of designing them -- with perhaps less regard for the product's actual "necessity".