[Feature: New Theory of Reading] Reading as Experience: The Future of Books from the Perspective of Environment / Kyoko Shibano

Despite being an extremely low-output artist, manga creator Fumiko Takano expresses a unique space-time with overwhelming quality. One of her representative works is "The Yellow Book: A Friend Named Jacques Thibault." Although it won the Grand Prize at the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, it had been out of stock for some time, but fortunately, it has recently become available again.

The protagonist, Michiko Taya, is a high school senior living in a snowy rural town. At home, she lives with her parents and her elementary school-aged younger brother, and they are looking after a frail younger cousin. Michiko, who helps out with housework and is skilled at using a knitting machine, takes on odd jobs from her mother's friends while continuing to read the five-volume yellow book she borrowed from the school library, "The Thibaults."

No particularly major incidents occur. However, her humble and ordinary daily life—on the school bus, in between looking after the small child, and even after the family has fallen asleep, reading by the bedside light—synchronizes with the world of the novel through Michiko's inner self. Jacques Thibault, who aspires to revolution, and his companions pose various questions to Michiko, and they engage in a continuous dialogue within her daily life. The story ends when Michiko, having decided to take a job at a major local knitting factory, informs them of her choice and will, receives their support, and returns the yellow books to the library.

In Takano's current latest work, "Dormitory Tomokins," published in 2014, masterpieces of natural science by figures such as Shin-ichiro Tomonaga and Tomitaro Makino are taken up as themes. While this work introduces the joy of books themselves more directly, its origin lies in "The Yellow Book." It deserves to be more widely known that this is not only an excellent manga work but also a first-class discourse on reading.

By the way, in "The Yellow Book," two devices related to reading appear. One is the school library where Michiko borrowed the books, and the other is the bookshelf in the Taya household. The depiction of the library is quite abstracted, but according to the author herself, the setting is around the late 1960s to early 70s (see "Eureka" Vol. 34, No. 9 [Feature: Fumiko Takano], July 2002), so one can imagine a very simple interior with linoleum or wooden floors. The five-volume Hakusuisha edition of "The Thibaults" that Michiko read is noted as being published in 1966, so it might have looked shiny and new on the shelf.

On the other hand, the bookshelf at home is tucked away in the lower part of a closet, covered with a cloth. It is haphazardly lined with old children's books, which Michiko's father pulled out for the young, sickly niece who cannot go outside.

The spines of the books bear specific titles such as Grimm's and Aesop's fables, biographies of great people, origami and crafts, and encyclopedias for elementary school students. Although these are fictional, the contrast in how they are depicted compared to the library is because they are the books that "Miccho-chan and Motone-chan (the brother's name) read." The lineup is almost like a standard collection of Japanese children's books from the Showa era, but this bookshelf is the reading history of the Taya children and the scenery that once surrounded them.

What kind of bookshelf was in the house where you were born and raised? When and where did you get that one book you were obsessed with during your student days? When talking about reading, people often speak by overlaying past memories and personal episodes onto books. This is because the act of reading is not simply "reading a book," but is established as an experience that includes the entire process and environment before and after.

Michiko Taya was given commonplace but reasonably rich books, and she eventually began borrowing books her parents didn't know from the school library. Her father, an understanding man, says to his daughter:

"Miccho, you want to buy that book? You just have to order it."

"I think it's a good thing to keep a book you like for your whole life," he mutters.

Although it doesn't appear in the work, there is likely a bookstore in this town, perhaps not very large, where they occasionally buy books. If she feels like it, she can "order" and expand her world, or she can take the plunge and go out into it. It is unknown whether Michiko, having said goodbye to her girlhood with "The Thibaults," will open that door again. However, the fact of how such devices and opportunities were set up in the society she lives in had a decisive impact on Michiko's reading experience.

From such a perspective, the significance of bookstores as a reading environment in Japan is great.

The general style of bookstores familiar to us was established about 100 years ago, around 1920. A striking feature compared to bookstores abroad is that magazines and books are sold through the same distribution network, but if we trace its roots, it goes back even further to the Meiji era.

As symbolized by the bookshop "Fukuzawaya Yukichi" and this journal, Mita-hyoron (official monthly journal published by Keio University Press), modern Japanese publishing started with the import of journalism and academic knowledge, both originating in the West. The industrial structure was newly created accordingly, but in that process, pre-modern publishing activities such as kusazoshi (illustrated storybooks) were also included and institutionalized. Furthermore, by placing a rational distribution mechanism at its center, the characteristics of the publishing industry were concentrated in the final outlet, the "bookstore."

In this way, the "bookstore" in modern Japan became a device with a multi-layered structure that incorporated an extremely diverse range of publications and readers. Furthermore, these "bookstores" were recognized nationwide as distribution points for state-designated textbooks and had already become a social infrastructure by the Meiji period. In Japan, where library administration lagged behind, public library development plans with budgets were only established around 1970, and they were actually installed starting in the 1980s. During that time, for about half a century, "bookstores" continued to multiply, serving as places that comprehensively handled everything from origami books for children to boxed sets of literary works and academic books, supporting the way Japanese people "read."

With the advent of the internet, the situation changed completely. The biggest change is that the process of obtaining books and information has been replaced by access to databases. Internet bookstores like Amazon use search engines and electronic payment systems to allow users to order books themselves. What was important here was not speed, but the shift in agency and the provision of resources for that purpose. This was first welcomed by bibliophiles who had made full use of libraries and bookstores, and digitized bibliographies were recognized as tools to highly facilitate reading activities.

However, as smartphones became widespread and internet shopping became commonplace, such structures were instantly erased from consciousness. Now, twenty years after the establishment of Amazon Japan, what exists is no more than a mass of quantity. Small screens are updated each time, disconnected from experience. The expectation of the expansion of the world known by Michiko's father, who said, "You just have to order it," was lost in exchange for getting everything at once.

Therefore, if we are to think about the future of reading, new experiences within this socially digitalized space will be necessary. Resistance to things like Google, Amazon, and e-books is often paired with the tangible sense that "there are discoveries in seeing books lined up on a shelf," "it's important to hold them directly in your hands," or "the joy of turning the pages of a book." But come to think of it, these are all experiences based on the frames provided by the modern publishing system.

Libraries and bookshelves built on a digital basis must be equipped with frames that create new experiences while leaving traces of the analog. Systems like "Machi Library" and "Librize," which connect and visualize collections in various locations, tell us the whereabouts of books that are not databases. Offline events such as book clubs and book festivals, which have been flourishing in various places recently, may also be activities that attempt to establish reading through new experiences.

By the time digital natives make up the majority of the population, books themselves will likely change little by little. What kind of experiences will we have when encountering and engaging in dialogue with books? This is a proposition that Michiko Taya, living in the 21st century, and we ourselves must create and leave for the next generation.