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Thursday, 24th December 2015
In Japan Entertainment News,
Tokyo bookshop dedicates itself to one book at a time
A small bookshop in Tokyo sells just one title at a time, dedicating its space to an exhibition all about the volume.
Morioka Shoten can be found in the district of Gonza, which is known as a luxury shopping destination, and represents a whole different approach to bookselling.
Since opening in May, the shop has only every stocked one title at a time, with the book changing on a weekly basis.
Among those that have been sold by Morioka Shoten are Tove Janssen’s The True Deceiver and Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales.
Yoshiyuki Morioka, owner of the shop, told the Guardian: “Before opening this bookstore in Ginza, I had been running another one in Kayabacho for 10 years. There, I had around 200 books as stock, and used to organise several book launches per year.
“During such events, a lot of people visited the store for the sake of a single book. As I experienced this for some time, I started to believe that perhaps with only one book, a bookstore could be managed.”
Elements that can be found in the book are displayed in the shop wherever possible while the title is being sold and Morioka encourages the authors to visit too.
It seems that this unorthodox approach is working as the shop has sold some 2,100 books so far. It also attracts visitors from far and wide intrigued by the premise.
In the new year, the first volume to be featured at Morioka Shoten will be Maseru Tatsuki’s photo anthology Fish-Man.
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