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

Do you ever make checklists?　Aren’t you that type of person?

Yoshida No, I don’t. I just rely on my memory. I just rely on my memory.

If I hadn’t made a checklist, I would have bought “Tetsuko’s Room 1,” “Tetsuko’s Room 2,” “Tetsuko’s Room 3,” and “Tetsuko’s Room 4” by mistake, wouldn’t I? You don’t have that kind of temperament, do you?

Yoshida No, I don’t. It’s a mess, really.

Surrealism created by the alphabetical order

T ─ Speaking of buying the same book, I find it hard to buy different variations. I had a copy of Shinichi Chiba’s “Sports Training” with a slightly different expression on the cover, and when Takeshi Uechi (a designer) saw it, he was surprised and said, “Gou-chan, you buy all that stuff! I love the story of his surprise. Do you have the original here?

Yoshida I can’t show it right now, it’s gone somewhere. I also have a book by Mr. Koizumi Ohashi with a slightly different cover, but as you can see, I can’t pull it out.

When I went to Book-Off, I thought, “Oh, there’s this book again! I went to Book-Off and was like, “Oh, there’s this book again!” and I picked it up, but it wasn’t exactly what I remembered. Kenny’s book “Skateboarding Angels” had “movie adaptation” on the spine, while others did not. Well, this information is also not important to ordinary people.

Yoshida My favorite book, “To Yoko” by Hiroyuki Nagato, also has a different cover. Probably because it sold too well, there were some complaints about the exposé, and a revised edition was released. Before the revision, there were a very small number of versions with a light green background that blatantly showed , but for some reason the image on Amazon is that one. And because the revised edition came out after the first edition sold like hotcakes, there are only a few of those.

Yoshida: But the revised edition is much better.

Yoshida: But the revised edition is more interesting. Because you can see what has been fixed. In the revised version, the exposé in the first edition turns out to be a dream ending, like “I had a dream called …….

Wow, that’s a messy revision!　I’d like to have that one. Another famous variation in the used book world is the biography of Sugiyama, the king of loan sharks, “New Evil Alchemy: Money, Money, Money in the World! I guess.

Yoshida That’s around there (where people can enter). It’s probably there, so there are almost all kinds. It’s hard to find that many of them. To be precise, the contents are a little different, and there are about three variations, but they are all the same (laughs).

Yoshida: For you, who calls yourself a professional interviewer, the books in your collection are not just a collection, but also materials for your work.

Yoshida: He says that all collections should be used for work later on. I used to do the same thing with my manga collection. It was like, “Someday I’ll love this.

─ Collectors and book collectors often buy books thinking that they will be useful someday, but then dispose of them saying, “I’ve never found them useful! And then they get rid of them.

Yoshida It’s the other way around. They are totally useful.

Yoshida: Yes, in your case, they are useful, so it’s even more troublesome (laughs). (laughs) Do you have your own rules about how you arrange the books here?

Yoshida Yes, the books are in alphabetical order by the name of the talent.

Do you follow the rules?

Yoshida Even if I do, sometimes I take out a book because I need it for work and don’t put it back, so it becomes more and more chaotic. In the first place, I can’t even put books back in that area (the bookshelf near the entrance).

It’s hard to get a book when you need it, so even if you bought it beforehand, you can’t get it out when you need it.

Yoshida That’s why I moved the bookshelf little by little, and finally found it!　But then I find out that I’ve taken it out and put it somewhere else, and I fall down and say, “Huh, ……” (laughs).

Yoshida: In terms of your work genre, do you ever think of categorizing your work as “martial artist,” “actor,” “idol,” or something like that?

Yoshida Well, it’s difficult. When I was living at home, my parents sorted me out somehow, but they don’t know what I’m like. Atsushi Onita is not a celebrity!　(laughs).

(laughs) ─ There are people who have multiple attributes. But when I look around the bookshelf like this, I can see that the alphabetical order makes it more interesting.

Yoshida It’s just a big genre of talent books that are arranged by name. In this way, the surrealism of the alphabetical order is created. For example, “Kyary Pamyu Pamyu” is followed by “Caroline Yoko” and then “Carol”.

That’s the best part, isn’t it? The line up of Riko Kuhoru and Chieko Kubozono, and Kaoru Kuroki and Hitomi Kuroki is also very touching.