A renovated former phone booth that has become a "seeds of picture books" mini outdoor library is seen with organizer Yoshie Hashiba, left, and two young children in Imari, Saga Prefecture, on Oct. 27, 2021. (Mainichi/Yoshiyuki Mineshita)

       IMARI, Saga -- Community-run mini outdoor libraries that lend picture books around the clock without check-out procedures have opened in this southwest Japan city.

       The initiative's name translates to "street picture-book cases: seeds of picture books." Some 270 books in total are kept at unattended shelves in renovated former phone booths and other structures in eight locations including parks and parking lots in the Kurogawacho district of Imari, Saga Prefecture.

       Anyone can borrow any number of books for an unlimited period, and can return them at any of the eight locations. The local branch of the "uchidoku" (reading at home) project, which promotes book club activities within families, introduced the libraries -- reportedly the prefecture's first -- after a similar initiative in west Japan's Wakayama Prefecture to improve children's opportunities to easily access books.

       According to the Imari Municipal Kurogawa Community Center, which is the local project branch's secretariat, 90% of the cost of the library initiative -- some 840,000 yen (about $7,400) -- is covered by the Saga prefectural and Imari municipal governments' community-revitalizing subsidies. Organizers painted old phone booths deep red, made bookshelves and bought 140 picture books. Uchidoku project's local branch members will periodically go around the eight locations to shuffle and manage the books.

       Twenty-six young children and others attended the Oct. 27 commencement ceremony at the community center. The uchidoku project's local branch head Yoichiro Sakita, 70, said in a speech, "The picture-book libraries can become symbols to brighten Kurogawacho and sanctuaries that warm people's hearts."

       The uchidoku movement's purpose is to encourage children's emotional development as they read books with family and discuss how they felt. Many of the people who worked on the Kurogawacho project are members of a local group that reads to children at the community center's library.

       The outdoor mini library project's name comes from organizers' hope that a fondness for the books will grow in children's and adults' minds, and then spread like flower seeds leaving their field to produce other flowers elsewhere.

       Yoshie Hashiba, 59, representative of the local reading group, said, "Picture books are friends throughout our lives that comfort us when we read them. I want people to treasure the books so they can be read by many others for a long time to come."

       For book donations and inquiries, contact the Kurogawa Community Center by phone at 0955-27-0001 (in Japanese).

       (Japanese original by Yoshiyuki Mineshita, Karatsu Local Bureau)

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