「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊

Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino

The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and guided it through several transformations until it reached its current status as a combination bookstore, izakaya and event space.

The first part of the book consists of diary entries in which Karino describes his working days, which often seem to be more about massive amounts of alcohol and his tendency to skip out on work than actual day-to-day operations. The reader could be forgiven for wondering if he even has many customers (or wants any). One diary entry is simply a notice of the bar’s closure for a holiday, which he begins by saying that he hasn’t been able to read books recently because he hasn’t had the time (which he admits is a well-worn excuse), and all he wants is a quiet, civilized life in which he can drink Shiranami sake (a cheap brand of sake) from the morning without getting falling-down drunk. And so he is closing the bar for a summer break during which he will “sleep, think, and when I get tired of that, walk around town, go to an izakaya in the evening, shed the alcohol from my body, sleep again, wake up and walk.” Karino never seems to have much problem justifying random days off; in another entry, he describes how he’ll often close the shop to go walking in places like Kichijoji and Mitaka. His rest stops during these walks are sento (public bath), which he finds by walking with his gaze directed up toward the sky so he can spot the tell-tale smokestack of a sento.

Karino describes one night when there were few customers so he closed early, turned the lights low and sat by the 囲炉裏 (an open charcoal hearth) and drank by himself. The amp was broken so the only sounds were the rain and the popping sound of the charcoal. He rode home in the cold on his bike with a beer in one hand, wishing that instead he was holding whiskey watered down with hot water. One night near the end of the year, Karino writes about drinking whisky in hot water by himself, listening to John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” He hasn’t gone to any year-end parties, and prefers this way of wrapping up the year. He describes his day as resembling a tea room or a miniature garden, which brings to mind something self-contained and small in scale but perfect.

Lest we should make the mistaken assumption that running a bookstore/izakaya is too idyllic, Karino follows up these diary entries with three essays on how he came to start his bookstore and his subsequent moves. After working for two years at a secondhand bookstore, this store closed due to poor sales, so he somehow decided that the logical thing to do was to open his own store. He chose Kunitachi as a location simply because his girlfriend lived there and there were plenty of izakaya, as well as a famous roast giblet restaurant, in the neighborhood, so he figured he could have fun after work. He didn’t even look into whether there were other secondhand bookstores in the area. Karino also had no idea how to get financing for his venture, but went to the bookstore (naturally) to research this and learned about the National Finance Corporation, which made loans to individuals and small companies starting businesses. The biggest difficulty in getting a loan was finding a co-signer (normally a family member). In the article he read, the author used an agency that found him a proxy, so Karino decided to go this route too. The agencies he called all seemed dodgy and charged steep fees, but he finally found an agency that seemed more trustworthy, and although the man initially said they didn’t take on loans for such low amounts (Karino wanted to borrow ¥2,000,000, or roughly $19,312 at the current exchange rate), when he heard it was for a bookstore, he made an exception because his father had run a bookstore. This is the kind of lucky break that so frequently seems to save Karino from his rather casual attitude toward business. Karino ended up getting the loan with this broker’s help, but several years later, he was watching the news when he saw his face on the TV screen—he had been arrested for fraud.

In another typical predicament, the night before Karino was supposed to open his bookstore, all the shelves were in place, but they were barely full. He didn’t have enough stock, even though he had grudgingly used all of his own books and his girlfriend had contributed hers as well. Luckily, they realized that the next day was the recyclable garbage collection day, so people would be putting out books. Cans of beer in one hand, they pushed a cart through the Kunitachi neighborhood and collected books and magazines (imagine the surprise of customers who find the very same books they had put out with the garbage now on a bookstore’s shelves!).

There were almost no months in which sales exceeded ¥200,000 ($1,931), and from that he had to pay ¥80,000 ($772) in rent for his store and ¥60,000 ($579) for his apartment. Karino knew he was poor, but every night he gathered with friends and people he met in the neighborhood to drink, although it was never clear to him where the money came from. That was the origin of the idea to make his bookstore a bar as well. This change didn’t make him a great living, but at least he no longer had to trawl through recyclable garbage for clothes. In an approach to reading he called すけべな読書, he was always on the lookout for recipe ideas as he read, recreating the menus that Yuriko Takeda wrote down in her famous Fuji Nikki.

Karino behind the bar

But running an izakaya posed difficulties for Karino. He’d always been an introvert, and managed to get through the forced interactions with people he didn’t know by drinking. At one point, he fell into a deep depression during which he had no energy to do anything but watch historical dramas all day with a glass of alcohol always in hand. Finally, after his bar had been closed for two months and he had nearly pickled himself with alcohol, a friend in the book trade managed to snap him out of this bad spell. This was also what made him decide to hold events at his bar, starting with a talk by Takeshi Okazaki (who I wrote about here), who had been bringing people to this book café and introducing Karino to people for years. The novelist Yamazaki Naocola has given talks at his bar, as well as the essayist Sen Ishida and many others who would be familiar to anyone who hangs out at Japanese bookstores.

Source: cowcamo MAGAZINE

It might seem cruel to write about a book telling the story of a bar that combines everything many of us love (good cocktails and sake, conviviality and atmosphere) when we can’t experience it for ourselves at the moment, but Karino also writes so well of quiet and books that it wasn’t frustrating to read about someplace out of reach (for now). He also relates one episode that made me think of our current moment. Karino had forgotten to pay his telephone bill and service was cut off, but after paying the bill, he catches the very moment when his phone is reconnected. The noise coming from the receiver changes from a cold, synthetic tone to a warm burr, giving him a rush of happiness at having witnessed the very moment when his shop is linked to the world again. We will have that moment too, and until then, we have books like this!

Karino serves curry on Sunday and Monday nights Source: Tokyo Shimbun

コクテイル

東京都杉並区高円寺北3-8-13 北中通り商店街

Cocktail

3-8-13 Kita Naka-dori, Koenji Kita, Suginami-ku, Tokyo