Leather-like sheet bearing grain finish and process for producing the same

A semigrain-finished leather-like sheet which comprises an entangled nonwoven fabric comprising three-dimensionally entangled bundles of microfine long fibers and an elastic polymer contained in the entangled nonwoven fabric, wherein the semigrain-finished leather-like sheet simultaneously satisfies the following requirements 1 to 4:

• (1) an average fineness of the microfine long fibers of 0.001 to 2 dtex;
• (2) an average fineness of the bundles of the microfine long fibers of 0.5 to 10 dtex;
• (3) wherein the grain-finished leather-like sheet has five sections designated as the following five layers of equal thickness:
• a surface layer, a substrate layer 1, a substrate layer 2, a substrate layer 3 and a back layer, in this order along a thickness direction thereof a part of the microfine long fibers which form at least one of the surface layer and the back layer are fuse-bonded to each other such that the fuse-bonded microfine long fibers form a non-napped grain surface, and the microfine long fibers which form the substrate layer 2 are not fuse-bonded, and
• (4) microfine long fibers separated from the bundle extend substantially in a horizontal direction on an outer surface of the surface layer and/or the back layer and cover 50% by area or less of the outer surface, wherein a bundle in first to tenth bundles in a thickness direction from the outer surface of the semigrain-finished leather-like sheet is separated into the microfine long fibers.