Go Yoshida, talent book collector, sneaks into the “Magic Cave of 10,000 Books”!

Collections are interesting. It is fun to look at a substantial collection that has been assembled according to a specific theme, but it is even more interesting to hear about people who are crazy about collecting. In this series, I will visit various collectors and collect episodes related to their collections. Why do we collect things?　What lies beyond what we collect?　Friday’s Collecting Original” is a collection file that collects collectors.

This time, we are joined by Go Yoshida, a professional book reviewer and interviewer. He is said to be “more knowledgeable about the subject than the person himself” because of his careful preliminary research and the fact that he has read as many of his subjects’ works as possible. Many of the people he interviews include professional wrestlers and other martial artists, as well as actors, idols, and other entertainers, or “celebrities.

As a result, he has a huge collection of “talent books”. Mr. Yoshida himself often appears in the mass media, and his bookshelf at work is sometimes glimpsed in the background. This alone is a sight to behold, but apparently, the scene is far from that. We infiltrated this “magical cave of talent books”…

Books occupy all of the two apartments.

When I opened the front door, I was greeted by a doll of Tatsuo Umemiya’s pickle shop.

Yoshida That’s actually a doll of a croquette shop called Umetatsu-tei. The shape of the doll is different for a croquette shop and a pickle shop.

This is a topic that is not important to the average person! (laughs)

(laughs) So today I came to see the bookshelf of Mr. Go Yoshida, who has a lot of talent books, but there are so many bookshelves that I can’t really grasp the structure of the room. Is this a 2DK or so?

Yoshida: Yes, it is. This room right after the entrance is 9 tatami mats, and there’s another slightly smaller room in the back. When I first rented the house, I used the entire 9 tatami room as a bookshelf and the room in the back as my living space. My parents’ house had three or four rooms occupied by my books, but they had to give them up to my sister and her husband, so they sent me all their stuff.

Wow, I can’t fit it all in!

Yoshida Then, when I tried to rent another room in this apartment, I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have enough credit, so I was forced to buy an apartment near here.

I had no choice but to buy a condo nearby just for the book.

Yoshida It’s about 70 square meters over there. The other place is bigger, has a TV in the bathroom, and a bigger kitchen, so it’s better for living, but I live here. The reason why I live here is because the larger of the two rooms over there is completely filled with bookshelves. There are bookshelves on all four sides, and bookshelves on the inside.

It’s like a library.

Yoshida You have to walk like this (crab walking) to get through, and there’s no fluorescent light, so I put various lights on the bookshelves. But even with all that work, the inside of the bookshelf is still not organized (laughs). (laughs) There’s also a bed, but the top of the bed is also a storage space, so it’s not functioning. So there is a way to get rid of the bed and completely turn the apartment into a library. ……

I don’t have time for that (laughs).

Yoshida Anyway, the apartment over there is not in a state where people can enter, so I make sure that no one but myself can enter.

This room is also surrounded by bookshelves in all directions, and it doesn’t look like you’ve taken any measures to prevent earthquakes.

Yoshida I’m not worried at all. When the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, the other apartment was not so badly damaged because I had used various quake-resistant goods, and some bookshelves collapsed in this room.

─ Do you know how many books you have in your collection now?