Book Bowels

Does your bookshop have a toilet? Your library?
Apparently many people experience an interesting phenomenon which was only first defined in 1985. A woman named Mariko Aoki wrote to a magazine that had a letters section. She simply stated that she was “not sure why, but since about two or three years ago whenever I go to the bookstore I am struck by an urge to move my bowels.”
Apparently, the letter was only included in the magazine because the editor found it amusing. However what they didn’t expect was the response it received. A large number of readers wrote in saying that they too experienced the phenomenon. When you unexpectedly strike a nerve with the public what do you do? You exploit it! Especially if you are a magazine trying to sell copies. As such the magazine included a special feature on the phenomenon with opinions from many people as to the cause, effect, and other locations it manifests. Nowadays the phenomenon is named after the original letter writer and called the “Mariko Aoki phenomenon”, but is also prosaically known as “book bowels”. I would be embarrassed if my name will give in to a phenomenon such as this, however Mariko is not and has been happily interviewed about the phenomenon by the magazine and others many times since.
Although the Mariko Aoki phenomenon re-entered public consciousness from time to time over the following decade it wasn’t until the internet grew to the size it was in the early 2000s that the phenomenon began to be taken more seriously. This was due to internet searches using keywords such as bookstore, defecation, and urge, becoming regular search engine queries. The phenomenon has also been associated with both university and community libraries.
In psychology we talk about ABC when discussing a type of learning – antecedent, behaviour, consequences. The same ideas apply to the clinical picture of phenomena such as this.
As such the phenomenon is typically broken down as a) after being in a bookstore for a period of time (the antecedent or contributing factor), b) there is a sudden change in the state of the person (behaviour or timing), c) resulting in the urge to defecate (consequence).
I am deliberately using the ABC criteria as some people consider this a learned phenomenon – ABC relates to operant conditioning1. Others have postulated that it is classical conditioning (aka Pavlovian) whereby coincidentally needing to go to the toilet a few times while in a bookstore becomes a conditioned habit. But does either learning theory really explain the reason behind it? Many other hypotheses for the cause have been put forward. Smell, and particularly the smell of books triggering associations with reading on the toilet has been considered. Positive or negative anxiety about all the information contained in the books were also theorised to play a role, but then conversely it was suggested that being surrounded by books is so relaxing, the bowels relax too… Unfortunately, there is no consensus on the cause. However, I found a blog post which lent heavily towards smell as the cause. This might be oversharing, but my favourite bookstore used to trigger the phenomenon in me, but then they moved a few doors down the street and for some reason the design of the new store doesn’t trigger it at all. So maybe there are environmental factors too?
Whatever the reason, it is an interesting phenomenon and worth exploring for the simple reason that a lot of people felt a sudden and meaningful connection to each other when they realised that they were not alone in the experience. That ‘aha’ moment of it’s not in my head, and it’s probably due to a love of books, brought people together through the shared bond, even if they did not meet up in real life. This is why I think it qualifies as a great moment in literature.

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1. Which is the sort of learning you might use when training a dog to sit (antecedent = command to sit, behaviour = dog sits or is induced to sit by holding a treat over their head and consequence = get reward (treat, praise or pat). It is also how humans learn many of their behaviours.
2. Via an academic database, so I’m inclined to accept that it is reasonable quality.
Information presented here is mostly derived from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariko_Aoki_phenomenon