店長がバカすぎて (Tencho ga Baka sugite) by 早見和真 (Kazumasa Hayami) (Kadokawa Haruki Corporation) *Japanese Text Only ~Ernie Hoyt

Kazumasa Hayami is a Japanese writer from Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture. When he was still a student at Kogakuin University majoring in literature, he went to door-to-door to various publishers to offer his services and eventually was hired by the weekly magazine AERA and wrote for the column titled 現代の肖像 (Gendai no Shozo) which translates to A Portrait of Our Times in English. It was a column dedicated to reporting on prominent people of the time. 

He made his literary debut in 2008 with his novel ひゃくはち (Hyakuhachi) based on his own experience as being a bench warmer on a prestigious high school baseball team. The book was later adapted into a movie. His novel ザ・ロイヤルファミリー (The Royal Family) was published in 2019 and was later adapted into a television drama series. 

The book 店長はバカすぎて (Tencho wa Bakasugite) which currently doesn’t have an English translation was published in 2020 by Kadokawa Haruki Corporation. To be honest, this was my third attempt at reading this book. Reading books in another language is a very daunting task. The first time I tried to read this book, I only got as far as two pages. The second time, I only managed ten. However, I persevered and was finally able to read the novel until the end. 

店長はバカすぎてroughly translates into English as [The Store Manager is So Stupid]. The novel is written from the point of view of a contract employee, twenty-eight year old Kyoko Tanihara who is single and lives alone and whose father runs a sushi shop in Kagurazaka. She works at a small bookstore called Musashino Shoten in Kichijoji, a neighborhood in the western part of Tokyo.

The story begins with Kyoko having to listen to her boss at the daily morning meeting before the store opens. This is a common practice in Japanese companies. It is called 朝礼 (chorei) which means morning assembly. Kyoko has a headache and isn’t really listening to her boss until he calls her by her full name. That’s another one of her boss’s habits that annoys her. He calls everybody by their full name. 

Kyoko doesn’t mind the morning assembly but believes they could be much shorter. She is really annoyed that she has to stand there and listen to her boss’s longwinded monologue. Lately, he seems to be hooked on self-help books and is always encouraging his employees to read them. 

It really isn’t the morning assembly that has given Kyoko a headache. The cause of her pain is one of the bookstore’s regular customers. A middle-aged man who always comes in on the morning that his favorite fishing magazine is released. Unlike the U.S., all the magazines in Japan have a specific release date. They are not delivered around the first or second week of the month as most U.S. publications are, excluding the weeklies. The computer shows that there are three copies in stock but they are not where they are supposed to be.

She asked the person in charge of shelving magazines if she had seen the fishing magazine. The part-time staff took offense thinking that Kyoko was accusing her of not doing her job. She then asked her boss who also said he was not the one who shelved it either. 

One of the bookstore’s full-time employees and Kyoko’s superior and friend, calls her over to the counter. They are looking at the security camera which shows the manager holding in his hands something that definitely looks like the fishing magazine the regular customer was looking for. It shows him setting them down in the self-help section as he picks up a self-help book to recommend to his employees at today’s morning meeting. 

The above is just one of the examples of what Kyoko Tanihara has to deal with. She also has to deal with hard to please writers, editors who seem to look down on small and mid-size bookstores, and a load of problem customers such as one that insists Kyoko order a book for her even though the book has been out of print for years, or the customer that wants to make small talk about things that do not have anything to do with books or publishing. 

As someone who has worked in the book industry for a number of years in both the United States and in Japan, I could relate to so much of what Kyoko Tanihara goes through every day at the bookstore. 

Kyoko Tanihara loves working in a bookstore. It has always been a dream of hers. She loves talking to people about books, recommending books, reviewing books, and talking to authors about their books as well. But she also has to deal with a lot of negatives - annoying customers, a stupid boss, and even stupider president of the company and yet she perseveres in being a bookseller. 

I’ve had to deal with different bosses, annoying co-workers and problem customers as well but like Kyoko, I also love the book industry. I really didn’t want to leave it but I had no other recourse at the time of my retirement from the bookstore. I hope this book gets translated into English in the future. I would be one of the first ones to read it. If I was even more confident about my language abilities, I’d like to translate it myself so I can share it with other English readers and book lovers. 

A sequel has already been published but I’m going to take a short break from trying to read another Japanese novel. For me, the sequel will just have to wait.