Glendale Woman Creates a Public Library of Japanese Literature

When you are a lover of literature you tend to fall into one of two categories, a hoarder and coveter whose books can only be pried from their cold dead hands, or a sharer who wants the world to enjoy the books that they have loved. Fortunately for the residents of Glendale Mitsuko Roberts falls into the latter category.

When looking through the books she had sitting around her home in Glendale she realised that she had over 200 volumes of Japanese literature, many of them sent to her by her mother from Tokyo Japan where her mother lives and Mitsuko grew up. What to do with them? Create a Public Library of Japanese Literature course.

Mitsuko says that when she was going through her books “I was thinking, this is such a shame,” and was soon sharing those thoughts with fellow parents at Verdugo Woodlands Elementary the school that her children attend and was met with overwhelming agreement at the vast amount of unread Japanese literature that the families had lying around their homes. Soon they were pooling their books and from the hundreds they collected together selected 300 titles and opened the Okanoue Library in May of 2015.

Today the Okanoue Library is thriving, with over 700 items, including fiction and nonfiction books, DVDs and comic books Mitsuko’s venture has something for every age and every taste, as long as it is Japanese of course and she opens up her home and her library several times a month. The library is never short of visitors with people who want to improve their Japanese such as the students from Verdugo Woodlands who are huge proponents of bilingual education, or who just want to read something in the language of their homeland being regular visitors. Older children sit and read books to younger ones and when Mitsuko sees the youngsters listening to an older student read, she knows the library has been worth the effort.

“It’s really refreshing to see the kids really enjoy it,” she said. “It makes me very, very happy.”

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The library’s name came after a school mum referred to Mitsuko’s home as ‘The library on top on the hill,’ and as her home is just over the hill from Verdugo Woodlands and “Okanoue” translates to “hilltop,” Mitsuko loved it immediately so the name stuck.
If you are in the area, Mitsuko opens the library a couple of times a month, usually at the weekend and it can be found in her front yard where she will have tables and chairs for adults and children as well as pop up large umbrellas to provide shade to read under.

Sounds like a perfect weekend to me.