A tiny book of At Kinosaki and a thought about responsive design
In early March, when I went to a workation retreat in Kinosaki Onsen, I visited Kinosaki Literary Museum KINOBUN near Kinoie for a small afternoon change of pace. It was snowing heavily, there were almost no people on the street, and the atmosphere was wonderful.
There were many interesting exhibits, but what caught my attention most was a tiny book with a cover, placed in the museum shop near the entrance.
Naoya Shiga wrote the short story "At Kinosaki." The story begins with the striking development, "I was kicked by a Yamanote Line train and injured." It is about coming to Kinosaki Onsen to recover from that injury. The book being sold consisted of two small booklets: the short story itself and an annotation book.
As you can see in the photo, it is small enough that the height of the lighter and the width of the booklet are not very different. It is just a little smaller than an iPhone 12 mini.
The annotated commentary booklet that comes with the main text is so thick that it almost feels like that is the main volume. It has close to 100 pages. Inside, text that layers the short story with historical context and interpretations is presented with simple illustrations.
So-called miniature books also make the letters themselves smaller, so in practice they feel closer to large books. But this booklet has a small amount of text per page, giving the impression of a paperback reduced in size while keeping the original text size. The main text has only 10 lines per page, and the whole thing is less than about 25 pages.
From a Web creator's point of view, it feels like a responsive design adapted to a page size of this scale.
A smartphone can provide access to nearly infinite content by itself, such as Aozora Bunko or Kindle ebooks. Holding this book again made me think that making a single booklet out of just one short story is actually quite luxurious. It is laid out with generous margins, and despite the small page count it provides a surprisingly satisfying reading experience.
If you go to Kinosaki Onsen, you will notice that this tiny short story appears all over town. The gap between the town's rich tourism resources and the small size of Naoya Shiga's short story, which probably occupies a large part of its image, is genuinely impressive.
The small short story includes a hot spring, and that hot spring still exists in the town today, where you can actually bathe. I imagine the enjoyment would double if you entered the bath after reading the story.
Small content, the people who care for it, and the economy that turns around it. This book reminded me again that even a small responsive website potentially has that kind of power.