A five-minute stroll from Palaceside Building brings you to the Chiyoda Ward Library (1-2-1 Kudan-Minami, Chiyoda-ku, 9th floor of the ward office), where an exhibition of winners of the Business Book Award is now on view.
The award was launched in 2010 by an organizing committee of publishers and related parties and is now in its third year. Some 120 "discerning eyes" — booksellers, book-review bloggers, and publishing and media professionals — vote on the selections. It is not limited to business books in the narrow sense; the prize defines its scope broadly as books that offer learning and insight for businesspeople, spanning practical titles to literary fiction. On display are roughly 50 winners from the past three years plus about 50 picks recommended by business book critic Eiji Doi, each with commentary. Photo courtesy of the library planning team's Facebook page.
This year's grand prize went to two titles: I Want to Give You Weapons (Takumi Taki, Kodansha) and Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson, Kodansha). The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs (Carmine Gallo, Nikkei BP) won the Excellent Translated Business Book Award. Jobs, the Apple co-founder who passed away a year ago, remains as popular as ever — hardly surprising.
Previous grand-prize winners: in 2010, The Black Swan (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Diamond); in 2011, Competitive Strategy as Story (Tatsuo Kusunoki, Toyo Keizai) and What If a High School Baseball Manager Read Drucker's Management? (Natsumi Iwasaki, Diamond).
In the Meiji era, Yukichi Fukuzawa's Encouragement of Learning, which advocated a way of life free from the constraints of the class system, is often cited as an early example of a business book in the broad sense — an enlightenment title. With the times changing so dramatically, finding good books may matter more than ever.
The exhibition runs through Saturday, October 27.