western

Then everybody once more knelt, and soon the blessing was pronounced. The choir and the clergy trooped out slowly, […], down the nave to the western door. […] At a seemingly immense distance the surpliced group stopped to say the last prayer.

Japanese is traditionally written downwards (tategaki) and you begin reading from the top right of a page. This means that books are opened from what we would consider to be the back. Nowadays, however, books, newspapers and magazines are often written western style, in horizontal lines (yokogaki) from left to right and, in these cases, the book is opened from our (western) understanding of the front.