The City of Texts: An Ethnography of The Work/Labor of Care in Booktown Jimbocho, Tokyo

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnography of Tokyo’s neighborhood Jimbocho, the center of the used book market in Japan, famous for its bookstores, publishing houses, and literary bars. I ask why it is that in the 21st century when Tokyo real estate values have soared and digital marketplaces vie with physical ones, this traditional form of book-selling community endures in the city center. Through participant observation, this dissertation examines social networks weaved through trade, a mutual passion for books between booksellers and collectors, and communal care of Jimbocho as a shared marketplace. Based on two and a half years of fieldwork in a bookstore, I provide an ethnographic account of book circulation through members-only professional auctions, specialized bookstores, and textual transmission. This anthropological dissertation explores the culture of curation of the material and textual past in the market for used and antiquarian books. I focus on a complex ethics of care surrounding the sale and circulation of texts, which I argue shapes the neighborhood, its social networks, and its economy. To theorize these attachments through labor, I propose tying together disparate concepts of labor, such as immaterial, affective, and manual, based on what they are oriented towards: in this case, preserving and caring for books. I suggest calling this the work/labor of care, understanding care as a relationship of moral and ethical oblication. In Jimbocho, this work/labor of care creates a link between certain pasts and uncertain futures and contributes to the continuation of the neighborhood.