[Special Feature: New Theory of Reading] Reading as Experience: The Future of Books from an Environmental Perspective / Kyoko Shibano

2020/05/11

One of the representative works of Fumiko Takano, a manga artist who expresses a unique space-time with overwhelming quality despite being extremely low-output, is a work titled "The Yellow Book: A Friend Named Jacques Thibault." Despite being a Grand Prize winner of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize, it had been out of stock for a long 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 younger brother in elementary school, and they are looking after a frail younger cousin. Michiko, who helps out well with housework and is skilled at using a knitting machine, takes on jobs requested by her mother's friends while continuing to read the five-volume set of yellow books borrowed from the school library, "The Thibaults."

No particularly major incidents occur. However, her humble and ordinary daily life synchronizes with the world of the novel through Michiko's inner self as she continues to read by the light of her bedside lamp even after her family has fallen asleep, in between looking after small children on the school bus. Jacques Thibault, who aspires to revolution, and his comrades pose various questions to Michiko, and they engage in repeated dialogues within her daily life. Then, Michiko, who has decided to take a job at a major local knitting factory, conveys her choice and will to them and receives their support, and the story ends when she returns the yellow books to the library.

In Takano's current latest work, "Dormitory Tomkins," published in 2014, masterpieces of natural science such as those by 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," and the fact that this is both an excellent manga work and a first-class theory of reading should be more widely known.

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 of the Taya family. The depiction of the library is quite abstracted, but according to the author herself, the setting is around the late 1960s to early 1970s (from "Eureka" Vol. 34, No. 9 [Special Feature: Fumiko Takano], July 2002), so one can imagine it had 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 brand new on the shelf.

On the other hand, the bookshelf at home is stored in the back of the lower level of a closet, covered with a cloth. It is haphazardly lined with nothing but old children's books, which Michiko's father pulled out for the young, sickly niece who cannot go outside.

On the spines of the books, specific titles are written, such as collections of fairy tales by Grimm and Aesop, biographies of great people, origami and crafts, and encyclopedias for elementary school students. Although they are, of course, fictional, the reason the depiction contrasts with the library is that they are books that "Miccho-chan and Motone-chan (the brother's name) read." It is a lineup that practically says "the standard for children's books in the Showa era," but this bookshelf is the reading history of the Taya children and the scenery that once existed around 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 engrossed in during your student days? When talking about reading, people often speak by overlaying past memories and personal episodes onto books, but this is because the act of reading is not just simply "reading a book," but is established as an experience that includes all the processes and environments before and after it.

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

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

and mutters, "I think it's a good thing to keep a book you like for the rest of your life."

Although it doesn't appear in the work, there is likely a bookstore in this town, not very large, where they occasionally buy books. If they feel like it, they can "order" and expand their world, or they can take the plunge and go out into it. It is unknown whether Michiko, who said goodbye to "The Thibaults" and her girlhood, will open that door again. However, the fact remains that how such devices and opportunities were set up in the society she lives in had a decisive influence 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 tracing its roots takes us back even further to the Meiji era.

As symbolized by the publisher "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 derived from the West, as its pillars. The industrial structure was newly created accordingly, but in that process, pre-modern publishing activities such as woodblock-printed books 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" of 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 bases for state-designated textbooks and were already able to serve as social infrastructure in the Meiji period. In Japan, where library administration lagged behind, plans for the development of public libraries with budgets were only made around 1970, and they were actually established starting in the 1980s. During that time, for about half a century, "bookstores" continued to multiply, supporting the way Japanese people "read" as places that comprehensively handled all kinds of books, from origami books for children to boxed sets of literary works and academic books.

With the appearance of the internet, the situation changed completely. The biggest change was that the process of obtaining books and information was 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 the shift in agency rather than speed, and the provision of resources for that purpose. The first to welcome this were 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, 20 years after the establishment of Amazon Japan, what exists is no more than a mass of quantity. Small screens are updated each time and disconnected from experience. The expectation of the expansion of the world known to 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 social space covered by digital technology will be necessary. Resistance to Google, Amazon-like things, and e-books is often paired with feelings such as "there are discoveries in seeing books lined up on a shelf," "it's important to hold them directly in your hands," and "the joy of turning the pages of a book," but if you think about it, these are all experiences based on the frames provided by the modern publishing system.

Libraries and bookshelves built on a digital base 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, and offline events such as reading groups and book festivals that have been actively held in various places recently may also be activities that attempt to establish reading from 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? That is a proposition that Michiko Taya, living in the 21st century, and we ourselves must create and leave for the next generation.