I am relying on my interview notes today to write this column.

I met Hisashi Yagi in spring last year. Aged 83 at the time, he was the proprietor of Iroha Shoten, a bookshop in the Ishikawa Prefecture city of Suzu that was badly damaged in the Noto Peninsula Earthquake of Jan. 1, 2024.

His shop was destroyed, but Yagi opened a temporary store nearby as soon as he could.

The reason for the rush was that he wanted to be able to supply textbooks to local schoolchildren when they went back to school for the new term.

The neighborhood shopping street was in rubble and pitch-dark at night, except for the........

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