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On a secondhand bookshop shelf, you stumble on a book you wrote when you were young, standing right next to Tatsuhiko Shibusawa and Suehiro Tanemura. “Not worthy even to tie their shoelaces.” Comparative literature scholar Inuhiko Yomota writes about that feeling, and about the 1960s and ’70s, when one “heretical” foreign work after another was being translated into Japanese. (From “My Apprenticeship in Old Books” #10, Hon no Machi, June 2026 issue)
On a whim I wander into a secondhand bookshop I don’t know and stand idly before the shelves.
Ah, I have this one at home. Oh, so it used to come out in a binding like this. As I gaze at the shelves for a while, all kinds of memories arrive, and my mind strays into a labyrinth of time.
The Age of Senkashi Books
Soon after the war ended, small publishers sprang up like bamboo shoots after the rain, and translations of literary works that could never have been published in wartime appeared one after another. Known as senkashi books, they were printed on paper re-pulped from scrap and waste paper, and they have deteriorated badly; after nearly eighty years, you need to take care even when pulling one from the shelf. Handle one carelessly and it may crumble to pieces. And yet among them were Novalis and Edogawa Rampo. What comes to my mind is the image of people who had starved for books during the war devouring these shabby new books as if they were a sign of liberation.
When “Heretical” Foreign Literature Was Being Read
From the late 1960s into the ’70s there was a different scene. “Heretical” foreign literature—the kind that would simply fall through the cracks of the orthodox, cultivated line of Iwanami Bunko or the classics line of Shincho Bunko—was translated one work after another and published by small presses that, likewise, kept springing up. It was, you might say, the opening skirmish of the publishing activity that would later set off the boom in fantastic literature.
By this time, of course, the books were no longer printed on senkashi; Japan had achieved a remarkable economic recovery. Many books were deliberately made to be fine objects in their own right—artists fitted them with slipcases imitating an antique patina or gave them bindings with a magical air, as objets d’art—and it would not have been strange to treat each volume as a work of art. Since they were printed in small runs, they were by no means cheap, but I remember how, around the time I went from high school to university, I frantically collected the volumes of Bataille’s collected works and the Shibusawa Tatsuhiko Shusei (Collected Writings of Tatsuhiko Shibusawa) as they came out one after another, and lost myself in reading them. They cast a decisive shadow over my intellectual formation, right up to the present day.
My Own Books, Shelved Beside Theirs
Looking at the shelves of a secondhand bookshop brings back all kinds of things. A translated novel I bought new in high school now carries an outrageous price, or the cover of its new edition is so thoroughly mediocre that I find myself musing, ah, the custom of giving literary books a slipcase is gone for good.
But there is one thing that unsettles me more than any of this. It is when I discover that the essay collections and translations I wrote when I was young are shelved next to the books of people like Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Suehiro Tanemura and Hideo Nakai.
This is embarrassing. My first thought is: what if someone sees this? These were authors I read devotedly in high school, through whose books I first learned the names of unfamiliar Western artists and writers—for me, noble and sacred écrivains. And beside them sit my own books, which I began writing much later, following in their footsteps. Does the world really regard them and me as writers in the same category?
Of course I was greatly influenced by Mr. Shibusawa and Mr. Tanemura. But to this day I think that I, as an essayist, am not worthy even to tie their shoelaces.
(Inuhiko Yomota, comparative literature / “My Apprenticeship in Old Books” #10, Hon no Machi, June 2026 issue)
Inuhiko Yomota
Born in 1953. Comparative literature scholar and film historian. He studied religious studies at the University of Tokyo and comparative literature at its graduate school, and taught for many years as a professor at Meiji Gakuin University. His many books include Nihon Eigashi 110-nen (110 Years of Japanese Film History), High School 1968 and Warera ga “Tasha” naru Kankoku (Korea, Our “Other”). He is currently writing the series “My Apprenticeship in Old Books” for Hon no Machi.
▶Read #9: Why Visit a Foreign Bookstore When You Can Buy Books Online? Kitazawa Bookstore, Jimbocho
This article was published in the June 2026 issue (Vol. 14) of Hon no Machi, the community salon magazine of Kanda, Ochanomizu and Jimbocho. You can read the full text, along with the other articles, in the PDF.
▶Read the June 2026 issue of Hon no Machi (PDF, in Japanese)
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日本語で読む — Read this article in Japanese