DAIGO and isshoni.: Osaka's Diary Maker for Office Work

Three isshoni. notebooks drawn to scale beside a timeline of DAIGO from its 1944 founding in Osaka to the 2021 Notebook Desk — Three isshoni. notebooks to scale, and seven dates from Daigo's own history page (spacing not to scale). Original illustration made for this story. © Stationery Times.

Key takeaways

Daigo's company profile gives April 1944 as its founding: four firms, one of them a photo-mount maker, merged into Osaka Godo Shiko with capital of ¥150,000 (about US$950).
A September 1945 order for year-end gift diaries from Osaka Bank, now Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, is the company's own account of how it became a diary specialist.
Daigo's factory page lists 89 staff at its first Horyuji plant in Nara and 24 at the second in March 2020; the Horyuji factory was completed in May 1990.
The isshoni. series was announced for early September 2019, and its horizontal Notebook Desk went on sale in February 2021 in two sizes for 13-inch and 15-inch laptops.
The Notebook Desk won an Excellence Prize in the Functionality category of the 30th Japan Stationery Award in June 2021, and it is listed among the 2022 Good Design Award designs.

Daigo is not a household name outside Japan, but its isshoni. notebooks, sticky notes and stamps now sit in US shops next to Hobonichi and KOKUYO. This is the company’s story as its own Japanese pages tell it, checked on October 28, 2026.

What is DAIGO?

DAIGO is Daigo Corporation, a maker of diaries and other paper products based in Nishi Ward, Osaka. Its company profile says it has “a history and tradition since its establishment in 1944” as a maker of paper products centered on diaries.

The profile lists diaries, address books, household account books, notebooks, sundries, 3D cards and Disney goods among products made in Japan. It also makes custom diaries for companies, which it says number about 500, and sells through about 5,000 shops including LOFT and Hands, and about 3,000 post offices.

Capital is ¥48,000,000 (about US$300,000) and staff number 170 including part-timers. The pages name Hideyoshi Takeno as president and Hirotsugu Shikata as chairman, and name no parent company.

How did DAIGO begin?

It began in April 1944 as a wartime merger: Inoue Photo Mount Manufacturing and three other firms formed Osaka Godo Shiko. Daigo’s history page gives capital of ¥150,000 (about US$950) and says business started under the Daigo trademark in September 1944.

Date	What Daigo’s history page says
April 1944	Osaka Godo Shiko formed by four firms
September 1944	Business starts under the Daigo trademark
September 1945	An Osaka Bank order for year-end gift diaries becomes the base for diary specialization
October 1948	Renamed Daigo Co., Ltd., as the trademark took hold
September 1965	Develops its own diary-making machines
May 1973	Starts selling Handy Pick, refills you insert to build your own diary
January 1983	Founder Saburo Takeno passed away; a book on his forty years with Daigo followed in April
October 1989	Opens a Singapore base, Daigo International
May 1990	New Horyuji factory completed in Nara
October 2004	Gains FSC chain-of-custody certification

The bank order is the page’s own turning point: it calls the diary job the foundation of the company’s specialization in diaries.

What is the isshoni. line for?

It is for people who work in offices. Daigo’s isshoni. page says it grew from the wish to make work more fun and more efficient, with fewer mistakes and a cleaner switch between work and off hours. The name means “together.”

Oggi, a Japanese magazine for working women, reported on August 26, 2019 that Daigo would begin selling the line in early September 2019, starting with pen-case notebook covers and sticky notes.

The range now covers desk and numbered-page notebooks, diaries, covers with a pen case, card files, sticky notes and point stamps. Daigo’s 2026 releases also show isshoni. diaries and notebooks in collaboration designs with Yohaku and Furukawa Shiko.

Who designs isshoni. products?

Daigo names no individual designer on the pages we read, and credits its product team. Asked by Nlab in October 2021 how the Notebook Desk came about, Daigo said it was developing notebooks for isshoni. when Covid-19 sent its own staff home, and a horizontal prototype fit a home desk so well that the team wanted to use it at once.

It adds that it could not run market research under the state of emergency, and relied on staff feedback. A post by a user about it drew more than 70,000 likes, Nlab reported. We found no designer credit for the Day Log, pocket notebook or stamps either.

Which isshoni. products have won awards?

The Notebook Desk, by two independent sources. It won an Excellence Prize in the Functionality category of the 30th Japan Stationery Award, announced in June 2021 by organizer Reed Exhibitions Japan. DIME reported the Functionality grand prix went to Hobonichi’s Earth Ball instead.

The Japan Institute of Design Promotion lists the isshoni. Notebook Desk by Daigo among its 2022 Good Design Award designs. Daigo’s own page adds that the Notebook Number won a 2022 Good Design Award too.

Our Japan Stationery Award 2026 winners page covers the prize as it runs today.

Which isshoni. products are sold in the US?

Five of them, in shops we checked on October 28, 2026. Each has its own guide, with specs, sources and US listings.

Product	Our guide
Notebook Desk Thick (laptop-front notebook)	isshoni. Notebook Desk
Pocket notebook with pencil	isshoni. pocket notebook
Day Log B6 Slim (three-month planner)	isshoni. Day Log
Translucent film sticky notes	isshoni. film sticky notes
Point Stamp Flat	isshoni. Point Stamp

Our newer guides cover the Notebook Number, the other 2022 Good Design Award item on Daigo’s page, the roll sticky notes and the PVC pen case notebook cover; the index sticky notes and the insert notebook have guides too, linked from those pages.

Daigo also makes lines outside isshoni.: a Daigo tea-time notebook appears in our Bungu-ya-san Taisho 2026 winners list.

Where does DAIGO make its notebooks?

In Japan, mostly at its two Horyuji plants in Ando, Nara Prefecture. Daigo’s factory page lists a first plant with 89 staff and a second with 24 as of March 2020, and says its quality system follows ISO 9001.

Maruzen Junkudo lists Japan as the country of origin for isshoni. notebooks and sticky notes we checked. Daigo does not say which plant makes which product. For other Japanese makers with long Osaka roots, see KOKUYO’s history, and for more notebooks from Japan see our best Japanese notebooks.

Frequently asked questions

Is DAIGO a Japanese company?

Yes. Daigo Corporation is based in Nishi Ward, Osaka, and its company profile says it has made paper products centered on diaries since 1944. It lists 170 employees, part-timers included, and capital of ¥48,000,000 (about US$300,000).

What does isshoni. mean?

Isshoni is Japanese for 'together'. Daigo's isshoni. page opens with a line that reads roughly 'together with you who work', and the line is built around helping office workers enjoy work, work efficiently, make fewer mistakes and switch between on and off.

When did isshoni. launch?

A women's-magazine site reported on August 26, 2019 that Daigo would start selling isshoni. in early September 2019, beginning with pen-case covers and sticky notes. Daigo's own pages we read give no launch date.

Is there a named designer behind isshoni.?

Daigo credits no named designer on the pages we read. Its product team told the news site Nlab in 2021 that the Notebook Desk came out of its own in-house notebook planning, and recent 2026 releases are co-designs with Yohaku and Furukawa Shiko.

Did the isshoni. Notebook Desk win a Japan Stationery Award?

Yes, an Excellence Prize (yushusho) in the Functionality category of the 30th Japan Stationery Award, announced in June 2021. It was not the grand prix; DIME says that went to Hobonichi's Earth Ball.

Does a bigger company own DAIGO?

The Daigo pages we read name no parent company or major owner. Its company profile lists Daigo Corporation alone, with president Hideyoshi Takeno and chairman Hirotsugu Shikata.

Where are isshoni. notebooks made?

Japan, according to Maruzen Junkudo's listings and US sellers. Daigo's factory pages describe two plants in Ando, Nara Prefecture, called the Horyuji first and second factories.

Can you buy isshoni. in the US?

Yes. Yoseka, JetPens, Jenni Bick and The Journal Shop listed isshoni. sticky notes, notebooks or stamps on October 28, 2026, and bungu.store ships from Japan.

Sources (14)

Plain-text version for AI agents: daigo-history.md · Spotted an error? See how we check facts.