Book Off Brand Guidelines: A 1990 Sagamihara Used-Book Store and Bright, Open Aisles

A second-hand bookshop rethought as a bright store.

Book Off began with one store. BOOKOFF GROUP HOLDINGS’ own timeline says the first directly run BOOKOFF opened in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, in May 1990, and that the operating company was set up in August 1991. Japanese Wikipedia names the founder as Sakamoto Takashi and says the company was first registered under another name, The R, before taking the name Bookoff Corporation in June 1992. The brand is written in capitals as BOOKOFF on its signs and corporate pages, English Wikipedia notes.

The idea was to make a used-book shop look like ordinary modern retail. Japanese Wikipedia says the stores were lit like convenience stores, given larger floor areas, treated to remove the smell of old stock, and opened to customers who wanted to stand and read, something older second-hand dealers had discouraged. English Wikipedia describes the stores as large, clean and brightly lit, and says the company trimmed the page edges of books with a machine so that they looked newer on the shelf. Japanese Wikipedia calls the result a new kind of shop, the shinko-shoten, or “new used bookstore.”

Growth came through franchising. The company timeline dates the national franchise chain to October 1991 and the first franchised store to the following month. It then widened what the stores bought and sold: used CDs, videos and laserdiscs from 1994, Japanese Wikipedia says, and, in the company’s own list, children’s goods in 1999, sporting goods, accessories and clothing in 2000, and tableware and other household goods in 2001. Used hobby goods such as model kits and figures followed in 2007, and used mobile phones in 2011.

Not every chapter was smooth. Japanese Wikipedia records that the company’s leadership changed in 2007 after irregular sales accounting came to light, and that a run of store closures followed as the second-hand market shrank, including the Harajuku flagship in September 2007.

Formats, franchises and a mascot.

The brand now spans several store formats. In the company timeline, a large mixed-goods store called Chūko Gekijō opened in December 2000 and was later renamed; the first store under the name BOOKOFF SUPER BAZAAR opened in September 2009. Japanese Wikipedia describes BOOKOFF PLUS as a mid-sized format that adds clothing to books and media, and lists newer names such as Japan TCG Center, a trading-card shop format that began in Kichijōji in November 2021, and Aso-Viva, a hobby and card store that does not stock books.

Book Off has also worked inside other brands’ systems. Its timeline records that it joined the HARD OFF franchise for used electronics in December 1996 and ended that franchise agreement in March 2015, after which, Japanese Wikipedia says, it ran its own electronics reuse business. It joined the TSUTAYA video-rental franchise in September 2000, and in October 2014 transferred 31 TSUTAYA stores, through a new subsidiary, to the book distributor Nippon Shuppan Hanbai. In November 2008 it took over the running of the new-book shops Aoyama Book Center and Ryūsui Shobō.

The public face of the chain includes a mascot. Japanese Wikipedia names him Yomuyomu-kun and says he was later given a family, Kaukau-kun and Uruuru-chan, who appear in the chain’s television advertising. It adds that the performer Shimizu Kuniaki was long used as the chain’s image character.

Online sales arrived in August 2007, when BOOKOFF Online opened, the company says; in January 2023 it opened rehello, a site for branded and collectable goods.

How the category presents itself.

Japan’s second-hand, hobby, book and sports chains tend to present themselves through the store itself before any logo. Many of them grew from a single shop, and their corporate pages often open with that first branch, the town it stood in and the year it opened, followed by a timeline of new formats, franchise agreements and listings on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

In second-hand retail, the buying counter is as much a part of the identity as the sales floor. Chains publish what they buy, how customers can bring goods in or send them by post, and which stores take which categories, from books and CDs to trading cards, toys, clothing and electronics. Some run separate buying-only centres or online services alongside their shops, and describe these on the same corporate pages as their stores.

Hobby and collector chains lean on display and naming. Shops are often split into small rooms or annexes, each with its own name and a single subject, such as manga for one readership, vinyl figures or vintage toys, so that a sign at the door tells a visitor what lies inside. Book chains, by contrast, describe long aisles, broad stock and space to browse, and some have used bright lighting and open layouts to make used books look like new retail. Mascots and capitalised store names appear on signs, bags and advertising.

Behind the shop fronts sit corporate structures that the companies set out in plain terms: founders, holding companies, parent groups, franchisees and shareholders, along with overseas stores that opened, moved or closed. The guides in this group follow those published histories, and treat colours and typefaces as an unofficial interpretation rather than an official brand standard.

A holding company, shareholders and stores abroad.

The company went public on the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s Second Section in March 2004 and moved to the First Section in March 2005, according to its timeline. Its shareholders changed several times. Japanese Wikipedia says that in May 2009 its largest holders sold their stakes to Dai Nippon Printing and its subsidiaries Maruzen and Toshokan Ryūtsū Center, and to the publishers Kodansha, Shogakukan and Shueisha; that the Hard Off Corporation became its largest shareholder in May 2011; and that Yahoo Japan held a stake from 2014 until November 2018.

On 1 October 2018 the group created a pure holding company, BOOKOFF GROUP HOLDINGS, which replaced Bookoff Corporation on the exchange; it moved to the new Prime market in April 2022, and its corporate page gives its headquarters as Sagamihara. On 18 February 2026 the trading house Itochu and BOOKOFF GROUP HOLDINGS announced a capital and business alliance, the Asahi Shimbun reported the same day. The paper said Itochu was to buy about 5.01 percent of the voting rights from existing shareholders, and ITmedia reported on 19 February that the sellers were Shogakukan, Shueisha and Kodansha. The alliance agreement is listed as signed in the company’s timeline; the share purchase was agreed in February 2026 and is not shown as completed in the reports cited here.

Overseas, the company says its first BOOKOFF in New York opened in 2000 and that its US stores, first aimed at Japanese residents, now serve local customers, with some stores devoted to anime goods. In Malaysia it has run used-goods stores under the name Jalan Jalan Japan since November 2016, stocked with goods from Japan, and in 2022 the format reached Kazakhstan. English Wikipedia says its only Canadian store, in Vancouver, opened in 2005 and closed in 2012. The group counted 835 stores, 466 run directly and 369 by franchisees, at the end of May 2026; the Asahi Shimbun gave about 840 in Japan and abroad in February 2026.

For a design guide, Book Off shows how a second-hand chain can borrow the cues of new retail, from bright lighting and wide aisles to a capitalised name and a friendly mascot, and repeat them across hundreds of franchised stores. Compare the Tsutaya and Hard Off guides. For this guide we use aisle blue, shelf white and tag yellow with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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