Collection
As of March 2005, Oya Soichi Bunko holds over 640,000 volumes of 10,000 magazines titles and 70,000 books.
Magazines, ranging from the Meiji period to the present, are located in the Setagaya Main Library. The catalog mainly comprises popular magazines, including apparel, cosmetics, gossip, lifestyle, cooking, health, hobbies, sports, arts, music, literature, entertainment, and travel. A few additional collections cover politics, economics, science, history, education, and criticism. Most of the magazines are contributions from publishing companies and individuals.
70,000 books are stored in the Ogose Branch Library in Saitama prefecture. Oya’s book collection does not contain primarily academic works. Instead, he preferred to collect books that were minor, trivial and uninteresting to some people because he considered those books great ingredients for his articles. As such, his library is an invaluable resource for scholars and reporters interested in the popular culture of the past 130 years in Japan.
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