Kojima found a new edition of Seicho Matsumoto’s “Amsterdam Unga…

In 1974 Kojima attended a tutoring school in another city more for the adventure of the commute than for studying. One rainy day he took shelter in a bookstore in Ikeda, and the large cover of the novelization Columbo: Publish or Perish, which contained black-and-white photographs inside, led him to buy with his allowance the first book he had chosen out of his own interest. He used each photograph, appearing about every twenty pages, like a breath of air and read all 261 pages in one sitting.

The day before Sakyo Komatsu’s death, Kojima saw Japan Sinks on a special display in a bookstore and bought it; he felt a sense of fate because an earthquake had forced the public to rediscover the author. Seeking to understand what Komatsu might have felt about Tohoku, Kojima reacquired several of Komatsu’s works, and an adult rereading of Virus superimposed a scene of skeletons in Tokyo Bay with 3/11 in his mind and moved him to tears.

“Every time I went, there were less and less books available. And then I realized it was because I was buying all the books.”

Kojima bought Hankyu Densha solely for its cover and title. He began reading it propelled by railway nostalgia, became caught by the book’s gentle, almost maternal wistfulness, and joked that he finished it at express-train speed.

Kojima continued to consult the annual guide Kono Mystery ga Sugoi not so much to find new books as to check whether the books he had chosen for himself appeared on the list. In 2012 he congratulated himself for recognizing the top entries until he came across Hiroko Minagawa, an author he had not read; this wounded his pride as a daily visitor to bookstores. After learning that Minagawa, now eighty-two, also walked inside a bookstore every day, he delightedly opened The Resurrection Fireplace and immediately proceeded to read two more of her works, Shi no Izumi (Fountain of Death) and Toritsu Suru To no Satsujin (Murder at the Upside-Down Tower).