Shigeru and Kazuhiro Yamaji are father and son who run separate used-book stores in an old commercial building owned by the family in noisy Shibuya, west Tokyo. The district is a rampant consumer hub, a magnet for juvenile shoppers and after-office drinking. Smoke and steam billow from yakitori bars and ramen stands. Crowds scurry around the scramble crossing. Touts for hostess bars loiter on the stained, greasy streets like the wafting smells of grilled meat. On nearby “love-hotel hill”, rooms can be had for about US$20 an hour.
Shigeru, seventy-one, has gentle, intelligent eyes and silver hair. With its faded lino and fluorescent lighting, his shop, which has traded at this spot since 1957, goes by a couple of names: either Shibuya Kosho Center or Kosho Sanei. But the name is not important. To regular customers, the store is beyond the idea of branding, like a plain glass of water on a hot day. Books are all there is. Books outside on trolleys, books up to the ceiling inside. Books piled in towers on the floor, bound in plastic ribbon, yet to be appraised.
Enter the store by a sliding door on the right or the building’s entrance on the left, which takes you into a narrow stairwell. Downstairs is a DJ bar that serves Taiwanese food. To the right, Shigeru’s shop has no wall; there are only bookshelves facing into the hallway. Foreign books are here. I have bought sun-bleached volumes by Graham Greene, Ted Hughes, Mickey Spillane, English translations of Maigret, Roland Barthes. Most cost around 400 yen, less than US$3.
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