We introduce the notion of reproducing kernel Banach spaces (RKBS) and study special semi-inner-product RKBS by making use of semi-inner-products and the duality mapping. Properties of an RKBS and its reproducing kernel are investigated. As applications, we develop in the framework of RKBS standard learning schemes including minimal norm interpolation, regularization network, support vector machines, and kernel principal component analysis. In particular, existence, uniqueness and representer theorems are established.