Many patients report that while new memories fade away, their memories from long ago remain vivid. Picking up a once-beloved book from the past becomes a chance to revive old memories. From this thought, we came up with an idea to bring back to life old, once-loved books, by creating the world’s first book, for cleaning books.

Scent has the power to retain memory. From that fact, we co-developed a cleaning detergent that has a mixture of aroma essence that is said to be effective on dementia, with Lan International, an organic cosmetics company. We embedded inside the book, four needed items for cleaning. With the design rule of “book cleaning turns texts to color” we composited the book carefully, making it fit for an art book as well.

With this project, a new possibility for dementia patients and books was born. It is well known that reading helps with dementia, but creating a fresh new meeting with a once-beloved book creates opportunities for memories to be revived. We raised awareness, and also achieved in creating communication between dementia patients and the people close to them. This is not a publication of a new book, but is centered in the revival of an old book. We succeeded in the first endeavor of a publication company.