WEBVTT

1
00:00:00.900 --> 00:00:04.450
<v Teodor Halvorsen>This is The Long Vowel. I'm Teodor Halvorsen.

2
00:00:04.500 --> 00:00:09.550
<v Odile Marchetti>I'm Odile Marchetti, and I have a confession that fits today's word.

3
00:00:09.600 --> 00:00:18.050
<v Teodor Halvorsen>Our guest is Kosuke Nakabori, who sells second-hand books in Jinbocho, the book district of Tokyo. Kosuke, the word?

4
00:00:18.100 --> 00:00:24.750
<v Kosuke Nakabori>Tsundoku. It is written with three characters: to pile up, a small n, and to read.

5
00:00:24.800 --> 00:00:26.750
<v Odile Marchetti>So, reading by piling.

6
00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:34.850
<v Kosuke Nakabori>Yes. It's buying books and letting them stack up, unread. Not one book. A tower.

7
00:00:34.900 --> 00:00:36.950
<v Teodor Halvorsen>Is it a serious word?

8
00:00:37.000 --> 00:00:52.150
<v Kosuke Nakabori>It started as a joke. There is a phrase, tsunde oku, to pile something up and leave it there. Somebody swapped the last part for doku, reading. It sounds almost the same. So it's a pun that became a word.

9
00:00:52.200 --> 00:00:54.050
<v Odile Marchetti>How old is the joke?

10
00:00:54.100 --> 00:01:02.850
<v Kosuke Nakabori>More than a hundred years. It goes back to the Meiji era. People have always bought more books than they could read.

11
00:01:02.900 --> 00:01:06.450
<v Teodor Halvorsen>You sell the books. Is tsundoku good for you?

12
00:01:06.500 --> 00:01:20.050
<v Kosuke Nakabori>Very good. But I also buy the towers back. When someone moves house, I get a call. Forty books, the spines still stiff. Some have the receipt inside, as a bookmark, on page twelve.

13
00:01:20.100 --> 00:01:21.150
<v Odile Marchetti>That's painful.

14
00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:32.850
<v Kosuke Nakabori>It's not sad, I think. Each book was a plan. Somebody thought, one day I will be the person who reads this. The pile is a list of hopes.

15
00:01:32.900 --> 00:01:36.150
<v Teodor Halvorsen>Do people in Japan feel guilty about it?

16
00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:46.550
<v Kosuke Nakabori>A little. But the word helps. If there is a name, it's a habit, not a failure. My customers say, I am doing tsundoku, and they laugh.

17
00:01:46.600 --> 00:01:49.950
<v Odile Marchetti>My pile is by the bed. Eleven books.

18
00:01:50.000 --> 00:01:55.250
<v Kosuke Nakabori>That is a small tsundoku. Please come to Jinbocho; we can fix that.

19
00:01:55.300 --> 00:01:57.850
<v Teodor Halvorsen>Kosuke Nakabori, thank you.

20
00:01:57.900 --> 00:02:04.950
<v Odile Marchetti>That was tsundoku. Next time, a word from Arabic that only happens with music.