Junichiro Kida: The Wandering Personal Collection

I recall reading in a book by the Sherlockian Hiroki Naganuma that the paradise of a British bibliophile is to grow roses and read Sherlock Holmes by the fireplace at night. Unfortunately, my current circumstances are a world apart from such a life.

Recently, in order to move into a smaller residence, I disposed of my collection of approximately 30,000 volumes and recorded the process in a book titled "Zosho Ichidai" (Shoraisha). I was somewhat concerned about how readers would perceive someone over 82 years old speaking at length about their attachment to books. However, my motivation to write was spurred by indignation over the fact that, in recent years, the former collections of many researchers—not just my own—are being rejected by public institutions and disposed of for a pittance.

For exactly half a century, I have been active in writing, primarily focusing on modern history and the history of publishing culture, and more recently on media-related criticism and the occasional novel. These are all genres that require a vast amount of literature. Having been born during the war and raised in a state of hunger for books, I made an effort to acquire as many reference books, such as dictionaries and handbooks, as possible when I set out to become a writer. While I had to use libraries, my policy was not to rely on them too heavily, and I built the foundation of my own collection. Since it was common knowledge for scholars and researchers from the pre-war to post-war periods to conduct research against the backdrop of their own collections, people like Togo Yoshida and Senzo Mori, who conducted research based almost entirely on libraries, were the exceptions.

As a writer who is constantly chased by deadlines, I cannot do my job without having reference materials close at hand. Looking back, my busiest period was around age 40, when I was juggling four newspaper columns and three weekly magazine serials, in addition to writing new books. Sometimes I wrote standing up to keep from falling asleep. At one such time, I asked Mr. O, who was in the spotlight as a critic of popular literature, when he wrote his manuscripts. He replied, "I wake up at 4:00 every morning and sit at my desk until 12:00. If I work until noon, I've essentially done an eight-hour workday. In the afternoon, I have the mental freedom to meet people or go hunting for old books." I immediately tried this 4:00 a.m. wake-up routine. It went well for the first two weeks or so, but when winter arrived, my body got cold, my efficiency dropped, and it didn't last long. In a residence centered on a library and a study, the heating was insufficient. Mr. O had purchased two apartments and used one of them as a library. It was around this time that I began to realize that maintaining a collection incurs significant indirect costs.

Mr. O further maintained that "the value of a collection is determined by whether or not it contains rare books," but I, conversely, maintained a policy of abstinence regarding rare editions. I had no leeway to pursue books for the sake of a hobby or pastime.

However, the world of books is diverse, and even if they are hobbyist books, a collection becomes dull if they are not kept in view. For example, Momosuke Hoshina (1868–1911), an educator and mineralogist from Nagano Prefecture, had a privately published book titled "Yoikaka wo Hoshina Hyakushu" (One Hundred Poems Wishing for a Good Wife) related to his hobby of kyoka (comic tanka), in addition to his collected works. The title meant "One hundred poems by Hoshina who wants to get a good wife," and it was Shozo Saito—himself a creator of curious books—who praised this as a rare and curious volume.

I found this book at an exhibition and sale (a so-called book fair). It was a small booklet with an elegant old-style binding, and every page was illustrated. At the beginning, it says, "As I grow old / I find myself thinking / recklessly / How I wish for a wife / in this world," which strikes a chord. It develops eccentric and playful poems such as, "Every time / I visit a courtesan / I think / How I wish for a wife / who glows faintly," and ends halfway in desperation with the hundredth poem: "If you say / there are none at all / then I shall think / of all things in nature / as the wife I wish for."

While literature regarding Momosuke is now too numerous to mention, at the time I was asked to write a biography of him for a series called "Document Nihonjin" (Documentary Japanese) planned during the high-growth period, he was known only to a few, and this book was not even in the National Diet Library. It goes without saying that I obtained it without hesitation, spending several times the usual budget for materials.

There are infinite similar cases. When I looked around my bookshelves while organizing my 30,000 volumes, the most numerous were not basic reference works but these kinds of secondary materials. I suspect I am not alone in this. If one were to move an existing collection into a newly built library, the order would be to first place large reference sets like "Koji Ruien" or "Kokushi Taikei" on the top shelves, memoirs and critical biographies in the middle, and push less visually impressive unofficial histories and reading materials into the bottom shelves. Enriching these shelves from the middle to the bottom is the greatest concern for writers and research-oriented collectors. Secondhand bookstores call this type of book "zappon" (miscellaneous books), but they are the source that turns a writer's hardships into joy and generates new ideas. No book is likely published with the intention of being a "miscellaneous book" from the start, but it is natural for some books to sink into the abyss of oblivion as times change. It is the worth of a reader, collector, or writer to breathe life back into them. However, there are no standards for these miscellaneous books; they are precious volumes to some, but nothing more than trash to others.

It was probably in my late 60s, when my collection exceeded 20,000 volumes, that I felt the limits of my physical strength after a major illness and began to think about the future of my collection along with my own. Can a collection be passed on? Basic reference works have a visible, universal utility. For example, an encyclopedia is a tool for everyone to gain a broad, introductory knowledge of subjects outside their expertise. However, the group of books known as miscellaneous books lacks such universality, so their use is limited. For a public institution to take these in and attract the attention of visitors, they would likely need a category such as "The Former Collection of Takeo Kuwabara" or "The Former Collection of Yukio Mishima."

However, that would only apply to the collections of famous people with a wide readership. Just around that time, I was involved in the management of a literary museum and, to be honest, I had a faint hope that they might accept my collection, but that seemed unlikely. Every time I looked inside the stacks, I saw they were already full of the former collections and materials of famous authors and critics. It had been nearly 30 years since it opened, and the scale had reached 1.1 million items including books and manuscripts. Furthermore, because the building was sturdy and the material preservation technology was excellent, applications for donations were never-ending.

On one occasion, the family of a deceased literary critic applied to donate a substantial amount of his former collection, which they had kept for about 20 years after his death, with his future in mind. However, the museum had to decline on the grounds that there were "too many duplicate books." Since the deceased had also been a university faculty member, I imagine they also inquired about donating to related facilities, but were likely refused because so many years had passed since his death. Looking around again, the public cultural facilities that had sprouted like mushrooms after rain during the high-growth period were all hit by dramatic budget cuts after the collapse of the bubble economy. They were barely hanging on, and the situation was such that the collections of dedicated scholars were not even given a second look. Fortunately, this collection was eventually taken in by a university where the deceased had taught for a short period, but at one point there were concerns that it might even flow out of the country.

Since this incident, I began to feel uneasy about the future of my own collection. My home, over 40 years old, was showing its age, my wife was suffering from illness, and my own physical strength was rapidly declining, so I decided to take the plunge and consider moving to the countryside. Omitting the details of the process, I established a residence with a spacious library and study in a new town development in Okayama Prefecture shortly after the Great Hanshin Earthquake. For a while, I felt very happy, but as they say, "misfortune often follows a stroke of luck." Because the development of the new town was suspended due to the collapse of the bubble economy and it was predicted that daily life would become inconvenient, I ended up running back with my tail between my legs. I was depressed for a while.

At that time, I ended up repeating the wasteful task of moving 10,000 books into the new house and then moving them out again. What troubled me at the stage of bringing them back was the issue of space. I no longer had the room to put 10,000 books back into a reinforced concrete house, so I pleaded with a secondhand bookstore I had been close with since my youth to temporarily store them in a warehouse in Tokyo. However, in the midst of the great confusion, I was unable to thoroughly implement the basic policy of separating titles that could be disposed of from those that could not, which resulted in causing trouble for the bookstore.

Another thing: one cannot understand without experiencing it just how much of a physical burden it is for an elderly person to take a large volume of books off the shelves, pack them 20 or 30 at a time into boxes, and then open them again. It is fine to leave the physical work to others, but since no one but the owner can record the contents of the boxes so they are understandable, the total amount of work hardly decreases. When you can no longer organize your own books due to declining physical strength, that is the end of the story.

It was four years later, when I had reached the age of 80, that my collection ran out of options and I was forced to practice "danshari" (decluttering), dispersing all but the 600 volumes I kept at hand. It is an age where people might say, "That's enough. Give it up," and in fact, I did give up. However, what still crosses my mind is whether there really were no other options besides dispersal. Needless to say, I explored the intentions of facilities, publishers, and friends I knew, but I got nowhere for reasons such as "cannot secure space" or "lack of staff." I also considered storing them in a trunk room for books, but found it impossible due to the cost. Under Japan's cramped housing conditions, it can be said that the suffering of a book collector ultimately comes down to the difficulty of securing space.

In any case, a collection is an accumulation of the owner's thoughts engraved in each volume, so it is natural to feel an attachment to it, and I cannot imagine anyone who would not wish for it to be passed on after their death. Furthermore, the fact that being passed on is an essential characteristic of books is clear from history, such as the Untei of the Nara period, where personal collections developed into libraries and archives. Maintaining such a book culture, which is unparalleled in other media, is surely a responsibility imposed on modern society. It is a concern related to the decline of print culture.

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of the magazine's publication.