Goshuincho size and page count: how the book is built before you fill it
There is no rule fixing the size of a goshuincho, but two sizes cover almost everything sold at shrines and temples: the small one at roughly 160 × 112 mm and the large one at roughly 180 × 120 mm. Most are accordion-folded from one long strip of washi, and a common build is 24 folded sheets, which gives 48 writing faces — 24 along the front run and 24 along the back. Whether the back run gets used is the owner's choice, so plan on about 24 faces if you mean to leave one side blank.
The key points of this article
- No standard fixes a goshuincho's size; in practice you meet about 160 × 112 mm (small) and about 180 × 120 mm (large)
- Accordion books are two-ply and open flat; stitched books are thinner, and their binding can be undone to reorder sheets
- A common accordion build is 24 sheets, which is 48 writing faces — so about 24 goshuin if you use one run only
- Faces left = total faces − faces used, counting a goshuin written across a spread as two
This article is part of “What is a goshuin? What it is, what is written on it, and what you take home”.
This article covers only how a goshuincho is built: its size, its binding, and how its faces are counted. It names no product to buy, and it does not cover how to ask for a goshuin or what to do at the desk.
Is there a standard goshuincho size?
No. Nothing fixes the size of a goshuincho, and the binderies that make them say so. One Japanese bookbinder that supplies shrines and temples states outright that there are no clear rules for the dimensions. What exists instead is convention: two sizes that nearly every shrine and temple shop stocks, plus a few shapes made for one purpose.
| Japanese name | Rough size | Where you meet it |
|---|---|---|
| 小判 / 小型 (small) | about 160 × 112 mm | more often at shrines; close to a Japanese paperback |
| 大判 (large) | about 180 × 120 mm | more often at temples; wide brushwork has room |
| 横長 (landscape) | about 182 × 257 mm | made to hold paper-cut and illustrated goshuin unfolded |
Figures differ by a few millimetres between makers, and one bindery describes its workable range as 160–190 mm tall by 110–134 mm wide. Treat the two rows above as the shapes you will actually be offered, not as specifications.
The practical difference between them is margin. A large page gives the brush more room and leaves more edge around a sheet written on separate paper that you paste in yourself later. A small page is easier to carry all day. Nowhere requires either, and no shrine or temple will turn away one size in favour of the other.
Whether to buy the book before you fly or at the first shrine you visit is a separate question, and it changes what else you have to carry; what to settle before the trip and what to leave until you are there covers that decision on its own.
Accordion or stitched: the binding changes how the book behaves
Two bindings are common, and they differ in paper thickness, in how the book opens, and in whether the pages can ever be rearranged. The Japanese names are 蛇腹 (jabara, accordion — also called orihon) and 和綴じ (wa-toji, stitched).
| 蛇腹 · accordion | 和綴じ · stitched | |
|---|---|---|
| How it is made | one long strip of washi creased at regular intervals and folded | sheets folded in two, held by thread or cord |
| The page itself | two plies glued back to back, so it is thick | a single thinner sheet |
| Opening | lies flat, several faces visible at once | opens like an ordinary book |
| Writing on both runs | usual; the second ply keeps ink from showing through | often kept to one side |
| Rearranging | fixed for the life of the book | the stitching can be undone to reorder or add sheets |
| Visible stitching | none | holes and thread show on the cover edge |
The accordion is the form you will see most often, and the reason is on the writing side of the desk: it lies open flat, so the brush is not fighting a fold or a gutter in the middle of the page. One bindery's description of its own process is explicit about the construction — the pages are glued in two plies, which is what makes writing on the back run ordinary rather than risky.
The stitched book has one property the accordion cannot have. Because the cord can be undone, sheets can be taken out, reordered, or added. If you care about that, it is worth knowing before you buy, because no amount of care will give an accordion book the same flexibility later.
How many faces does a goshuincho hold?
Ask how many faces can be written on, not how many pages the book has. A common accordion build is 24 sheets of hōsho washi, which comes to 48 faces: 24 along the front run and 24 along the back. One bindery publishes exactly those numbers for its standard book — 24 sheets, 48 pages of body.
This is where advertised numbers stop agreeing. The same physical book turns up described as 24 pages, 40 pages, 44 pages or 48 pages, depending on whether the seller counted sheets, faces on one run, or faces on both. None of them is wrong; they are counting different things. When a listing gives one number and no explanation, the useful question is whether it counts the back run.
So the honest planning figure is a range, not a number:
- Using one run only: about 24 faces in a standard book.
- Using both runs: about 48 faces.
- Either way, minus one extra face for every goshuin written across a spread.
Some shrines and temples write across two faces for a seasonal or a large design. That is theirs to decide, not something you can request your way out of, so leave a little slack in whatever figure you plan with.
The first face: a custom, not a rule
Nothing decides which face has to be the first one used. A bindery that makes these books puts it plainly: there is no rule about which page should be page one. The custom people ask about is leaving the very first face for Ise Jingu, and the same bindery's answer is that you need not keep it, and that keeping it is a fine thing to do — a choice, either way.
It matters here only because it changes the arithmetic. If you leave the first face empty on purpose, your usable total drops by one, and some shrines and temples will skip that face for you without being asked, which means the face you thought you were on is not the face they wrote. Check where the brush actually landed before you count anything.
How to count the faces you have left
Faces left = total faces − faces used, counting a spread as two. The book gives you no help here: a goshuincho carries no printed page numbers, so nothing on the paper tells you where you are.
A worked example, for a standard book of 24 sheets:
- You decided at the outset to use both runs, so the total is 48.
- You left the first face empty on purpose, so 47 are usable.
- Eleven visits so far, one of them written across a spread, so 12 faces are gone.
- 47 − 12 = 35 faces left, of which 24 are on the back run you have not started.
The one figure in that list you cannot recover later is the second: whether the empty first face was a decision or an accident. Everything else can be recounted from the book itself.
Two habits make the count reliable on the road.
- Count the faces once, at the start, and remember the number. Open the book fully and count the panels on the front run. That figure, doubled if you intend to use the back, is your total. Doing this before the first visit takes a minute; doing it in a queue does not.
- Decide the back run before you begin, not halfway. Owners who change their mind end up with a book whose second run starts mid-trip, and after that neither "pages used" nor "pages left" has one obvious meaning.
When a book fills faster than you expected, the decision is what to do with the visits that do not fit, and the order in which you buy and start the next book affects how readable the whole set is afterwards; what to do when a goshuincho fills up in the middle of a trip takes that case on its own.
Why the count matters after you fly home
The page order is the record. This is the part that guides to receiving goshuin tend to leave out. At the desk you are asked to open the book to the face you want written, so the order of the faces ends up being the order of your visits, and nothing else in the book states it. Knowing which face to present, and being ready for the moment the book changes hands, is covered in the words that pass between you and the desk.
Weeks later, at home, what you have is a book of calligraphy you cannot read and a run of photographs on your phone. The shrine or temple name is written in brush characters. The date is written in a Japanese era rather than the Western calendar, which is why reading the date written on a goshuin is its own problem. What survives without any reading at all is the sequence: this face came before that one, so this visit came before that visit.
That is why the page count is worth knowing before you start. A book you filled on one run, in order, front to back, is legible as a sequence forever. A book where the front run, the back run and a second book interleave is not, unless you keep a note of which book each photograph came from. Keeping that note per book — rather than as one long list — is the point of treating each book as its own record.
The app this site is about is built around that structure: records live under a book, page numbers are assigned in order within each book, and the records stay on the iPhone. It counts a spread as one page rather than two, so when you want the numbers to match the paper exactly, the paper's own page number goes in a note. It does not sync between devices. It is for a book you have already filled, which is not where you are if you are reading this before a trip.
Why this article names no product
Sizes and bindings are facts; which book is "best" is not. Shrines and temples sell their own books, often with a cover particular to the place, and a book bought at the first shrine of a trip is a souvenir of that shrine as much as a container. Judging one against another is not something this site is in a position to do, and the point of knowing the dimensions is to walk up to the shelf able to tell what you are looking at.
What is worth deciding in advance is narrower: one run or both, and roughly how many faces you need. Everything else can be settled in front of the shelf.
Frequently asked questions
- Which size should I carry on a trip to Japan?
- Either works, and the choice is about your bag and about the loose sheets you may be handed. The small size, roughly 160 × 112 mm, fits a jacket pocket and a day bag. The large size, roughly 180 × 120 mm, leaves more margin around wide brushwork and more room for a sheet written on separate paper that you paste in later. Neither size is required anywhere.
- Can a goshuin be written on both sides of the paper?
- In an accordion book, usually yes. Its pages are two sheets of washi glued back to back, so the ink of one face is far less likely to show on the other, and both runs are meant to be written on. A stitched book is a single thin sheet folded in two, so many owners keep to one side. Some owners leave the back run blank in either kind of book simply because they prefer the pages clean.
- How many goshuin will one book hold?
- Count faces rather than shrines. A common accordion build offers 48 faces, and each goshuin normally occupies one, so a single book covers a long trip with room to spare. Two things shorten it: a goshuin written across a spread takes two faces, and leaving the back run blank halves your total to about 24.
- Can I add pages to a goshuincho when it fills up?
- An accordion book is one continuous folded strip, so its length is fixed when it is made. A stitched book is held by thread or cord that can be undone, which is why sheets in that kind can sometimes be reordered or added. In practice most people start a second book rather than extend the first.
- Do the page numbers mean anything, since the book is not printed with any?
- A goshuincho carries no printed numbers, so the only ordering the paper holds is the physical order of the folds. That order is worth keeping: once the book is full and photographed, the sequence of faces is often the only thing that says which visit came before which. If you write nothing else down, the order of the pages is still a record.