, shortened to Kino's Journey, is a Japanese light novel

Light novel

A is a style of Japanese novel primarily targeting junior high and high school students . The term "light novel" is a wasei-eigo, or a Japanese term formed from words in the English language. Light novels are often called or for short...

 series written by Keiichi Sigsawa, with illustrations by Kouhaku Kuroboshi. The series originally started serialization in volume five of MediaWorks

MediaWorks (publisher)

was a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group known for their brand magazines and book labels. These included such well-known magazines as Dengeki Daioh, and Dengeki G's Magazine, along with MediaWorks' main light novel publishing imprint Dengeki Bunko. The company was merged with ASCII...

' now-defunct light novel magazine Dengeki hp

Dengeki hp

was a Japanese seinen magazine published by MediaWorks centered on publishing light novels. The first issue was released on December 18, 1998, and for the first eight issues was published quarterly; after this, it is being published bimonthly...

 on March 17, 2000. The first volume of the series was published on July 10, 2000 by ASCII Media Works

ASCII Media Works

is a Japanese publishing company in the Kadokawa Group which formed on April 1, 2008 as a result of a merger between ASCII and MediaWorks where MediaWorks legally absorbed ASCII. Despite this, the former president of ASCII, Kiyoshi Takano, became the president of ASCII Media Works. The company...

 under their Dengeki Bunko

Dengeki Bunko

is a publishing imprint affiliated with the Japanese publishing company ASCII Media Works . It was established in June 1993 with the publication of Hyōryū Densetsu Crystania volume one, and is a light novel imprint aimed at a male audience...

 publishing imprint

Imprint

In the publishing industry, an imprint can mean several different things:* As a piece of bibliographic information about a book, it refers to the name and address of the book's publisher and its date of publication as given at the foot or on the verso of its title page.* It can mean a trade name...

. As of October 2010, 14 volumes have been published, and over 5.6 million copies of the novels have been sold in Japan.