Three buildings, one bookstore
Go to Shibuya, take the local Tōyoko line one stop, and you’ll find yourself in Daikanyama, which is a neighborhood with so much retail that it feels like an outdoor mall. There, in a highly grammable warren of small rooms, is every vibey designer that made it, and a few that are in the process. There is Japan’s love for Americana. There is what the inside of Errolson Hugh’s brain looks like. There is the ski brand you haven’t heard of, but is everywhere on every hypebeast in Tokyo. You get the idea.
Abutting all that to the west is a familiar name in an unfamiliar setting: Tsutaya, basically the Barnes & Noble of Japan. But it’s not really a Tsutaya. It’s three buildings, connected with walkways and footbridges, filled with art & design books, attached to a couple of cafés. It’s also my favorite bookstore in the world.
I come from a city whose biggest “design” bookstore is smaller than my kitchen, in a country that has a scattered few. I have to fly at least four hours to get to a good design bookstore. At this Tsutaya, there is an entire floor devoted to art & design, in both Japanese & English, next door to a stationery department that literally possesses a fountain pen wall.
In a jetlagged haze, I come off the plane into this, people. It is an utter fever dream, an impossible brain reset, exactly what my psyche has been craving for however many years that it’s been since my last trip to Japan. Then I routinely blow a shameful amount of money and spend two weeks lugging books around the rest of the country, because I’m stupid.
Daikanyama is not the kind of place I typically recommend to people. There are a few good spots, of course, but I think you go there on the way to somewhere more interesting. And it’s not like a neighborhood that well-trod, a mile away from the busiest intersection on earth, particularly needs my help. Me talking about a Tsutaya, of all things, in that neighborhood, feels a little preposterous.
But it is not just a Tsutaya, and it is not just Daikanyama. The location & name are immaterial to what the thing is and represents. It is the sort of thing where if you’re into the kind of stuff that I’m into, and you read as much printed matter as I do, then you probably need to give it a chance. You’re flying into Tokyo anyway, and you’re probably going to Shibuya at some point. This Tsutaya also opens a few hours before the rest of the city seems to. So you have no excuse, see, and you will be providing me with a full report eventually.