About案内

Japanese philosophy, selected for contemporary Europe.

WAGAHAI is a one-person book studio. I am an editor from Tokyo, now working between Japan and the Netherlands, and this shop is the slowest part of my practice: finding Japanese books that carry a way of thinking — about space, letters, everyday objects, emptiness — and bringing them to readers in Europe.

Most of these books were never meant to travel. They are exhibition catalogues, design compendiums, illustrated classics; many have no translation and never will. But the thinking inside them survives the language barrier. Each book here comes with an editorial note — not a description, but the reason it was chosen.

The name comes from Natsume Soseki's novel I Am a Cat (Wagahai wa neko de aru) — a story told by an observer who sits slightly outside the world it describes. That feels about right.