[Feature: Encountering Books] Shigeru Hamamoto: The Japan Booksellers' Award is an Annual Festival that Creates Opportunities to Encounter Books!

The Japan Booksellers' Award was born from idle chatter in a bar. It all began in January 2003. Voices of disappointment spread among bookstore clerks who had been eagerly awaiting the announcement of the 128th Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes.

The biannual announcement of the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes is a peak sales period for bookstores. Among the many literary awards, the Akutagawa and Naoki Prizes are the most prestigious and result in the highest sales for winning works. Literary department staff had ordered the nominated works in advance and were waiting with bated breath for the announcement. However, the Akutagawa Prize was awarded to Tamaki Daido's "Shoppai Drive," which had been published in the magazine "Bungakukai" but was not yet available as a standalone book. Furthermore, the Naoki Prize—which is expected to sell even better than the pure-literature Akutagawa Prize—had no winner! For bookstore clerks, the result was that they literally had no books to sell.

The Naoki Prize that year was particularly controversial. Hideo Yokoyama's "Han-ochi," which had topped the Weekly Bunshun Mystery Best 10 and "Kono Mystery ga Sugoi!" at the end of the previous year and was considered the heavy favorite, was rejected after flaws in the novel were pointed out. While Yokoyama's subsequent declaration to break ties with the Naoki Prize caused a stir, it is also worth noting that five of the six nominated authors (excluding Yokoyama) later went on to win the Naoki Prize. They were a group of highly talented and popular writers of the era. All six had a suitable number of previously published books, and no matter who won, the bookstore shelves would have surely been bustling.

That is exactly why the disappointment of the bookstore clerks was so deep. What were the organizers of the Naoki Prize thinking by choosing no winner? The publishing industry had reached its sales peak in 1996 and was in the midst of a decline in 2003. Amazon had opened its Japanese site in 2000, and physical bookstores were feeling a sense of crisis. Despite this, one of the few opportunities for a fair that could draw people to bookstores and promote backlist titles alongside new winners had been lost.

It was only natural that for a while, the Naoki Prize became the main topic of conversation during drinking sessions between bookstore clerks and publishing sales reps. One such night, the topic of founding an award came up among the clerks: "If that's the case, why don't we create an award ourselves?"

At the time, books like "Crying Out Love in the Center of the World" and "A Dog Named Christmas" (White Dog and Waltz) had become million-sellers triggered by a single hand-written POP display created by a bookstore clerk. It was a period when the "power of bookstore clerks to sell books" was being rediscovered. "That sounds interesting. Let's gather some colleagues," someone who took it seriously said. "Alright, let's give it a try." Since no one had ever managed an award before, they had nothing to fear. They didn't think about it being impossible or too difficult. A meeting was convened in no time, and the decision was made to establish an award chosen by bookstore clerks.

The official name of the new award was decided as the "Japan Booksellers' Award: The Number One Book National Bookstore Clerks Want to Sell!" It was determined that one "most wanted to sell" book would be selected from Japanese novels published during the year through voting by bookstore clerks. To ensure it didn't end up as just a popularity contest, a system of two rounds of voting was established. Meetings were held late at night after everyone finished work, and nine months after the idle chatter in the bar, the first round of voting began. With the spread of the internet making it easier to vote, an unexpected number of votes poured in from across the country.

The first award, announced in April 2004, went to Yoko Ogawa's "The Housekeeper and the Professor." With Yu Nagira's "汝、星のごとく" (Like the Stars, You Are) winning this year in 2023, the Japan Booksellers' Award has reached its 20th milestone. During this time, almost all winning works have topped the annual sales charts for literary books and have been adapted for the screen. True to its name, the "most wanted to sell" books became the best-selling books.

In a booklet titled "20 Years of the Japan Booksellers' Award" created to commemorate the 20th anniversary, past winning authors contributed short pieces on the theme "Bookstores are made of..." Shion Miura, the 9th winner, wrote, "Bookstores are made of love and curiosity." Mizuki Tsujimura, the 15th winner, wrote, "Bookstores are made of unknown doors." Sonoko Machida, the 18th winner, wrote, "Bookstores are made of coincidence, fate, and necessity." If you open an unknown door—that is, the page of a book—you can go to any world. You can go to distant foreign lands, the future, or the past, and you can walk through many lives. "Bookstores have a vast number of doors. Coincidence, fate, and necessity are all there," Machida concluded.

To get people to open the vast number of doors in a bookstore, we must first get them to visit the store. The original purpose of the Japan Booksellers' Award was to hold a festival at the storefront! The main focus is to make people think, "Something interesting seems to be happening, so I'll go to the bookstore." Finding an unknown book at the store and reflexively picking it up, drawn by the title, cover design, or the blurb on the wrap-around band—this experience of encountering unknown books one after another is unique to physical bookstores. Whether it is coincidence, fate, or necessity, I want to believe that the Japan Booksellers' Award is functioning as an annual festival to provide the spark for these encounters.