午夜剧场

About 25 years ago, when I was a student in the Department of Library and Information Science in the Faculty of Letters, I worked part-time at the Tokyo Children's Library. This library was founded based on four children's libraries in Tokyo, including the "Matsunomi Bunko" established at the home of Kyoko Matsuoka, the library's honorary president and a children's literature scholar.

At this private library, which at first was just a fun place to work part-time, I ended up learning about the important role of public libraries. Ms. Matsuoka herself, after graduating from 午夜剧场's Department of Library Science (at the time), studied library science at a graduate school in the United States and had experience working as a children's librarian in that country. From her writings, I learned that the thousands of public libraries in the United States select and purchase children's books based on strict standards, which consequently supports the children's book publishing market and simultaneously leads to an improvement in its quality.

Although I had the goal of becoming a librarian in the future, I did not choose the path of becoming a librarian immediately, but instead went to study abroad at a graduate school of library science in Canada. After returning to Japan, I again did not become a librarian right away, but had the opportunity to work with Ms. Matsuoka for a limited period of four years on a survey of children's libraries.

Children's libraries (bunko) are private libraries run by volunteers. They are diverse, including those in private homes, community centers, supermarkets, and even those using decommissioned train cars. They increased rapidly from the 1960s, and by the 1980s, nearly 5,000 existed.

Their existence can be confirmed from before the war: a library located in a temple near the Akasaka Palace during the Meiji era, a library in a fishmonger's shop in Hirosaki City, Aomori Prefecture during the Taisho era, and a library started in Nagasaki City, which had been turned into ruins by the atomic bomb. In every era, there were nameless people who opened small libraries for children.

Yukichi Fukuzawa introduced the European library system in Things Western (Seiyō Jijō), writing, "In the capitals of Western countries, there are libraries. They are called bibliothèques." In the approximately 150 years since then, Japanese libraries have developed not only through the government but also through the power of the people. I hope that many people will learn about this through this book.

Now, after completing my research on children's libraries, I finally became a librarian as originally intended. Today, keeping what I learned from Ms. Matsuoka in my heart, I connect children and books from a "public" standpoint.

Kiichiro Takahashi

Misuzu Shobo

344 pages, 3,000 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.