Soul of Saito
“I feel like Thor entering Valhalla.”
-Erik Sjoen
Not since a visit to the legendary Warren Schwartz‘s house in 2000 (a visit so breathtaking that the mere secondhand mention of it on this site provoked emotion intense enough to shatter the minds of several readers, necessitating a hastily contrived warning label be applied to the report lest its savage contents cause further casualties) have I been so overwhelmed by a collection and its owners hospitality.
Kazunori Saito, author of three seminal books about Japanese toys that blew our collective mind when they were first released in the late Nineties, lives in a suburb of Tokyo. His neighbors are undoubtedly totally unaware of the treasure trove that slumbers within its walls. In fact, few visitors to his home even realize it. His collection is shoehorned into a single tiny room off the main hallway, inside every wall floor to ceiling adorned with vinyls, boxes, showcases, and more boxes. It feels like just about every Bullmark kaiju vinyl in the world is here. Ditto for the Jumbo Machinders. And weirder, rarer stuff. Then there are those glass cases stuffed full of Popy and Takatoku diecasts…
I would call it a secret crypt or catacomb if not for the miniature table and four chairs in the middle of the room, inviting visitors to sit, stare, and partake. Surrounded by some of the world’s rarest soft vinyls, Jumbo Machinders, and diecast toys, the effect is akin to that of the Mad Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland. Or perhaps a few hours spent in the kitchen of hashish brownie pioneer Alice B. Toklas.
But you don’t need mind-altering drugs to achieve enlightenment in Saito’s lair. Fueled by nothing more than diet coke, cookies, and the oh-so-sweet musk of slowly decaying cardboard and three decade old vinyl, we spent hours talking about where he’d found this treasure or that (inevitably, he’d picked it up years and years ago, when prices were only mind-boggling instead of outright insane). He opened his heart and home, offering to take any piece, no matter how rare, out of the display for us to fondle and drool over. The coup de grace: an audience with that King of Machinders, the Jumbo Daikumaryu.
After an extended session assembling it on his kitchen table, the only place in the house with space enough to accomodate the space dragon, Erik Sjoen, Jim Maitland, and I bid our farewells and stumbled out into the afternoon sun, stunned once again by the potent brew of hospitality and polyethylene. Who needs the Photonic Energy Research Institute when you’ve got a toy institute like this?
