Dog Years is a Tokyo-based publishing house. We aim to contribute to history by honoring and drawing on what our predecessors have achieved in print and publishing culture, while updating that legacy for the present day.
Our name comes from two sources: the well-known metaphor that one dog year equals seven human years, and “Dog Years,” a song by the American musician Maggie Rogers. Taking the flow of canine time as our guide, we hold to a philosophy in which “works age slowly, ferment over long stretches, and walk alongside people throughout their lives.” History offers many examples of work that went unrecognized at first and was understood only years later—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, to name a few. We regard time as the finest editor of all, and our publishing is oriented less toward the buzz of the immediate moment than toward the reader waiting somewhere far ahead.
