After Publish or Perish, Kojima began slipping away alone to the…

In 2010, a display in a bookstore marking the 120th anniversary of Agatha Christie’s birth re-hooked Kojima and led him to reread her major novels to find out what had fascinated him as a child.

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.

Kojima said that as a child he did not read and that he rejected reading without having tried it. In fifth grade he picked up Murder on the Orient Express because there was a film adaptation and he only wanted to see what the book was like; the novel struck him, sparked his curiosity, and led him to read almost all the Agatha Christie he could find before reaching middle school.

Kojima placed his awakening to reading in fifth grade, when he plunged into mystery novels from around the world. He continued with them through sixth grade, and upon finishing elementary school he moved on to science fiction, which he described as his companion until college; from that period he barely remembers reading anything else.

Kojima says that going to a bookstore was a daily routine he did not abandon even during the frenetic start of his studio. There he takes books in his hands, buys the ones that call to him, and loses himself reading them; on business trips he is not at ease unless he has several books in his bag, and he considers choosing and reading books to be part of who he is.