Radiation and rubble — that's Japan's reality now and for the foreseeable future; the only escape is to seize the bull called "relevance" by the horns and fling it to the devil. Gladly I accept the challenge. If I need an excuse, the bimonthly magazine Brutus provides one. Its June 1 edition, 118 pages thick, is devoted almost exclusively to, of all things, bookstores.

Bookstores! So they still exist, despite what the Internet has supposedly done to bricks and mortar and, indeed, to the book itself, another allegedly endangered species. Bookstores not only exist but proliferate, mutate, flaunt size or the lack of it, sport eccentricities or the lack of them. Some specialize — in film books, art books, books on Charles Darwin, 1960s ultra-leftwing literature, what have you, whatever the owner happens to be interested in. Others are airily undiscriminating, with stock ranging from the ancient classics to this month's serial manga.

I don't know how many shops Brutus profiles in its thumbnail sketches — too many to count. The number matters less than an overall impression that the trade is alive and well, or at least less moribund than is often feared. The largest store featured is Coach & Four in Sapporo. It houses a million volumes and doesn't even look crammed. The smallest, Tokufukudo in Naha, of course does, its floor space the rough equivalent of one tatami mat.