(Roughly) Daily

While most of us in the U.S. are finding it harder and harder to locate a bookstore, literary retail continues relatively strong in Japan.  Indeed, in a market where a flood of publications– novels, non-fiction, and lots (and lots) of manga– make it hard for a book to stand out, retailers are using creative displays to highlight their featured titles.

See more gravity-defying examples at “The avant-garde art of book stacking in stores of Japan.”

###

As we remove our choices oh-so-carefully, we might send free-thinking birthday greetings to Taiji Yamaga; he was born on this date in 1892.  A translator, publisher, and pacifist activist, Yamaga led resistance to Japanese involvement in World War I; then, when Japan invaded China, decamped to Manila, where he wrote and edited an anti-war newspaper (and created the first Tagalog-Japanese dictionary).  On his return to Japan after the war, he helped found the Japanese Anarchist Federation.

A champion both of Lao Tzu and Esperanto, he translated the writings of the former into the latter.

Taiji Yamaga and his wife Mika

source