I Could Stay for Hours

Chapter 1 The Joy of Bookstores (1)

I have always had a tendency to lose my memories, but perhaps because I have recalled them from time to time, my memories regarding bookstores are still relatively intact. What is the joy of a bookstore for a single customer? As I begin to think about that, I want to start with my personal memories. My first memory of a bookstore. For me, that consists of two stores from when I was an elementary school student living in Urawa City, Saitama Prefecture, now Saitama City.

The first was a small new bookstore located a short walk from the apartment where I lived, on the other side of National Route 17, just before Seiyu. Unfortunately, I have forgotten its name. There were magazine racks lined up outside. There were even dedicated ones with the logos of Shogakukan's grade-level magazines. When you went inside, there were high shelves, about two rows along the walls and in the center. I have a faint memory of reading the "Keibunsha Encyclopedia" series while standing there. I must have bought everything from "CoroCoro Comic" to "Weekly Shonen Jump" there.

I was curious, so I looked it up on Street View and was able to identify the general location. But the bookstore was no longer there. There are two properties on the same street that I suspect might be it, but I don't know if it's the site of a beauty salon or a laundromat now. But I certainly used to go there often.

The other store was "Suharaya Corso Store," located inside a building called Corso in front of Urawa Station, where my parents would occasionally take me. As of 2018, this store is still in business. Suharaya is a long-established bookstore with a 140-year history, and it is particularly well-known in the publishing industry for having operated the "Suharaya Training Institute," which trained second-generation bookstore successors. In stories from active bookstore owners, one often encounters episodes about Suharaya, such as the following.

Kyobundo is a long-established store founded in the second year of the Showa era (1927), and Tanaka is the third-generation owner. After graduating from university, he trained for two years at Suharaya, a major bookstore in Saitama Prefecture, before becoming the owner and manager of this store. Shinichi Sano, "Who is Killing 'Books'?" (President Inc., 2001), p. 49

It has produced a total of 177 graduates from 1975 to 2006, so that may be expected. However, for me as an elementary school student at the time, with no way of knowing such things, it was simply a "big bookstore."

While my parents were shopping at other stores, I was usually left at the bookstore. Every time, I would wander around, looking at the spines of books that seemed difficult, and the feeling of being overwhelmed by how many books there were in the world remains with me. I never got bored. If anything, I wished my parents would shop a little longer. Thinking back, it was from around this time that I felt I could stay in a bookstore for hours.

*Reprinted from "A Reader for Future Bookstores" (NHK Publishing), pp. 12-14