A little bit of Japan can be found in the west following a recent visit to Galway by that country's ambassador to Ireland, Kazuko Yokoo. The purpose of the visit was to establish a new western branch of the Ireland Japan Association (IJA).
Not that there wasn't a little bit of Japan there already, thanks to the chairman of the new branch, Mr Conor Kenny. He is part of the family enterprise that has developed highly successful trade links with the Pacific state, to the extent that the Japanese market is now a significant part of Kenny's Bookshops business.
It was 60 years ago this week that an advertisement in the Connaught Tribune heralded the arrival of "The Book Shop" in High Street, Galway. The opening date was Friday, November 29th, 1940. "New and secondhand books and lending library," stated the notice signed by Des W. Kenny BA.
The rest is history, and one that has been well documented in print and in a recent film by Donal Haughey. Much has changed in Galway since Des and Maureen Kenny set up shop during the lean winter of 1940 and went on to open the west of Ireland's first art gallery in their house in Salthill.
A warm tribute to that "extraordinary commitment to Irish literature" was paid at a recent book launch in the shop by the writer and publisher, Dermot Bolger.
Mrs Kenny has long been "the most loved and respected of Irish booksellers," and her family shop is "as legendary as Shakespeare and Co in Paris, only they don't have long-haired hippies sleeping upstairs and stealing their books," Bolger noted, when he marked the publication of a collection of photographs published by Trident Press.
The photographs are of the many writers who have frequented the shop over the years.
Most of the images in Face to Face were taken by one of the six siblings, Monica Rigney. She owned her first camera when still at school in Salerno in Galway. "I always enjoyed it but I never had any formal training, and I'd be terrified to sign up for that now," she said.
She became the official photographer almost by accident. "When I began working here, you used to be sent running when a writer strolled in. We'd try to get one of the local professional photographers like Ray Shanley or Jimmy Walsh to come down, but it got to the stage where it was embarrassing and we lost several people. So I said to Thomas that I'd take them instead."
She has captured at least 1,500 faces over the years, some of which were never developed for display on the shop walls, "because they weren't good enough," she says modestly.
The beauty is in the spontaneity. "Thomas would be chatting away to someone, and all I'd hear is `Camera, please,' so I'd rush up and take a snap, hardly even knowing who it was in many cases.
"If you gave them much time to think, it would be a different image. We would ask their permission, of course, but I'd leave that to Tom. The standard line was that it would help to sell the book, and using a photograph along with a window display certainly made a difference."
Fortunately, she says, she didn't have to make the final selection for the book and admits that she still has reservations about the quality of some of the images used.
She is flattered that families of writers have approached the shop afterwards, looking for copies of the negatives. Gabriel Byrne's mother was one, even though her son, an actor, writer and film director, is a very photographed public face.
The photos come with a particular story: such as that of the playwright, M.J. Molloy, looking almost terrified of the lens. The Kenny brothers' abiding memory was of him shuffling into the shop, "carrying his battered briefcase" and selling several copies of his plays to their mother. They describe it as "a savage indictment of Irish publishing that a playwright as important as Molloy should have to peddle his wares from door to door".
Face to Face, with biographies of the subjects by Gabrielle Warnock, introduction by Jeff O'Connell and foreword by Fintan O'Toole is published by Trident Press at £19.99 hardback.