Kokuyo (コクヨ)

Kokuyo began in 1905 making covers for account books in Osaka. The name means "the pride of the home province", the founder's tribute to where he came from. The firm is now Japan's leading stationer and one of the country's big office-furniture makers.

Its universal product is the Campus, a notebook launched in 1975 whose thin but opaque paper and flat-opening binding made it the absolute school standard: over three billion sold, and a range of rulings — including the dotted lines designed to align kanji and diagrams — copied across Asia.