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Japan's book scene is moving from bookstores to libraries
If you are, I suspect you already do this: when you travel abroad, you find yourself walking into a local bookstore.
I do it everywhere, not only in Japan but also abroad. My shelves hold some Chinese and Russian books even though I cannot read a word of them. A bookstore is one of the best places to understand the local culture: what people there are curious about, what they worry about, what they love.
But lately I’ve become obsessed with another kind of book place: local libraries.
I know that reading books is a trend among young people all over the world, and here in Japan, a big trend is emerging from libraries.
I recently read a Japanese book called 『都市のような図書館をつくる』—Building a library like a city. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been translated into English yet, but it captures precisely what libraries in Japan are trying to become a core of local community.
Until recently, oh, maybe still now… libraries have been boring and uncool place for most Japanese people.
That changed in 2013, when Tsutaya—a famous Japanese bookstore chain, known for its popular Daikanyama store in Tokyo— opened an innovative public library in Takeo, a small city in Kyushu area.
Tsutaya was the first place in Japan to put a Starbucks inside a bookstore in Japan, turning shops into a place where people linger. They did the same in Takeo’s public library: a Starbucks inside. In addition, they put a bookstore inside the library, so visitors could not only borrow books but also buy them. The bookstore sells some stationery and goods too, so the library made even people who had never been interested in books want to visit.
When the library became famous, visitors started arriving not just from the neighborhood bur from far away. Then, the city has changed little by little. Residents found themselves around books more often, and communities started forming there. It turned out that a library could reshape an entire town, and unique libraries began appearing all over Japan, one after another.
The most important point is: a library is a public place unlike a bookstore.