“Whether we sell another CD or not is beside the point,” Mr Kobayashi says from across the table in his local soba restaurant. He pauses, then explains what being in business has come to mean for him. “My wife and I often talk about whether to open the shop again tomorrow,” he continues, “but we always do. It’s about being there for people, to offer advice.”

The word he uses is sōdan (相談), a term that translates as ‘advice’ yet also carries an air of counsel. He explains that the value of being in business, trading in what he loves, is the range of human connection it has brought and still brings into his life. A shop with a door and an address is not only a space for holding and moving stock; it becomes a place where people come together. “If I hadn’t opened yesterday, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you,” he says, offering an instance of the serendipity that has become familiar to him.

Mr Kobayashi’s shop sits directly beneath the Yamanote Line, in one of the passages running under the tracks between Okachimachi Ekimae-dōri and Ameyokochō, referred to as the gādo-shita (ガード下), literally ‘beneath the girders’. Approaching from either side, you hear Shōwa Era music filling the passage—a gentle triplet sway of trembled vocals over a slow, rocking beat. The sound comes in generous supply from Mr Kobayashi and the speakers outside his shop, Rhythm (リズム, Rizumu).