Akira Yoshino, a co-recipient of this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry, served as an editorial supervisor for these books on display at Kinokuniya Shoten’s Shinjuku Main Store on Oct. 10. (Shingo Tsuru)

Sales of a century-old book about candles have heated up since Akira Yoshino won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

At a news conference on Oct. 9 held immediately after he was named a co-recipient of this year’s prize, Yoshino said that one of his early inspirations was the book “Chemical History of a Candle,” written by British scientist Michael Faraday and first published in 1861.

Yoshino, a 71-year-old honorary fellow with Asahi Kasei Corp., said that when he was a fourth-grader at elementary school, his teacher, who was a chemistry major, recommended the book for her pupils.

He said the book was full of interesting questions, such as “Why do candles burn?” and “Why are flames yellow?”

“As a child, I thought chemistry was fascinating,” he recalled.

Soon after the news conference, Kadokawa Corp., a Tokyo-based publisher of the book, received an influx of online orders. As of the midnight of Oct. 9, the book was out of stock.

The publisher has decided to reprint 20,000 copies of the book’s Kadokawa Bunko version and 10,000 copies of its Kadokawa Tsubasa Bunko version for children.

Iwanami Shoten, another publisher of the book in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward, said it also ran out of copies of “Chemical History of a Candle.”

The publisher said it has been inundated with inquiries from bookstores.

“It is so delightful that the book, which has conveyed an appeal of science and been read for a long time, is again being brought in the spotlight now,” an employee of Iwanami Shoten said.

(This article was written by Kota Takeda and Masayoshi Hayashi.)