Jimbocho, one of the world’s largest “towns of books,” opened the 65th annual Kanda Antiquarian Book Festival last week on the 24th. Rain on the weekend of the 25th and 26th forced the cancellation of the Jimbocho Book Festival, which mainly features new titles. From Monday the 27th, once the weather improved, the district has been bustling again.
The Kanda Antiquarian Book Festival runs through November 3. It is the largest event of the Kanda Association of Antiquarian Booksellers. More than 100 wagons line Yasukuni-dori westward from the Surugadai-shita intersection, forming a “corridor of books” that stretches some 500 meters of shops and shelves. The titles on offer total more than a million volumes.
Readers come from across Japan and from abroad for this major event, and Jimbocho is filled with books and people.