Established in 1970, Mosakusha is a small libertarian cooperative bookstore in Shinjuku / Tokyo, Japan offering a curated selection of magazines & books of small publishers on Japanese radical politics & counterculture.
It is actually the last relic of what was once in the late 60s and early 70s a national network of underground bookstores that not only sold books, journals and newspapers of interest to the New Left, but also distributed the publications of social movement groups on consignment.
These publications are generally rejected by the two dominant national book and magazine distributors which purchase the entire output of major publishers and distribute them to bookstores throughout Japan on six-month consignment. Mosakusha still carries publications for a much longer time with direct arrangements with small publishers accepting organisational pamphlets, zines, journals…serving as a central distribution point for the print and digital media and other artifacts produced by groups in the invisible civil society. Affiliated groups also offer events for their network being also a place for reunion and learning activities.
COUNTERSPACE 