Right outside the north exit of Chofu Station in western Tokyo is Shinko Syoten, a brick-and-mortar bookstore that Hideharu Yahata’s father-in-law opened in 1968 — back when Japan was on one of the most rapid economic growth trajectories the world has ever seen.
A spate of major magazines were founded during the 1960s including Josei Seven, Shukan Post, Weekly Playboy and the Weekly Shonen Jump, a manga anthology that has since become the best-selling comic magazine in history. Writers like Seicho Matsumoto and Sohachi Yamaoka were churning out blockbuster novels while how-to-books on improving everything from English language skills to sex lives sold in the millions.
By the time Yahata left his job as an engineer at a manufacturing firm and began working at his family’s bookstore in 2002, however, the golden age for booksellers seemed to be over. Japan was mired in a prolonged period of economic stagnation following the burst of the asset price bubble in the early 1990s, and while there were still plenty of bookshops in Chofu, things soon took a downward turn with the emergence of new technology.
“One by one they closed. I think five or six in the neighborhood have shut down over the years, and a couple more during the past year or two,” says Yahata, who is also chairman of the Japan Federation of Booksellers' Trade Associations (Nisshoren).
“Before the internet, bookstores were where people went to gather information,” the 56-year-old tells The Japan Times from the organization’s office near Tokyo’s “book town” of Jimbocho.
“But other retail channels such as convenience stores and Book Off, the used-books chain, began to proliferate. Meanwhile, online bookstores like Amazon ate into our revenue,” he says. “Finally, smartphones and social media made it so even fewer people purchase at physical shops.”
The number of bookstores nationwide, which stood at around 20,000 back around the time Yahata joined his family business, had plunged to 10,918 by March this year, according to the Japan Publishing Organization for Information Infrastructure Development. The Research Institute for Publications, in the meantime, says that the ratio of e-comics to physical copies — and to a much lesser extent, e-books and e-magazines — has soared, accounting for a third of ¥1.6 trillion (around $12 billion at the time) in publication sales in 2023.
So, are real-word bookstores doomed? Not quite. While they have been challenged by technology and a shrinking and aging population, recent years have also seen smaller, independent bookstores catering to more diverse and personalized tastes spring up across the country, while bigger outfits are experimenting with curation, luxury experiences and even unstaffed shops.
Whether that’s enough to save a declining business is still unknown, but the central government has taken notice, with the trade ministry establishing a team last month to promote local bookshops.
“A bookstore is a place where someone can browse a list of books of all genres,” Trade Minister Ken Saito said during a news conference on March 12. “We believe this is an advantage over the internet and other media in terms of broadening a person's horizons.”
From papyrus to pixels
Throngs of tipsy cherry blossom lovers are gathered at Tokyo’s Ueno Park on a recent afternoon to party under the pink blooms. Among them is Takuro Kawakami, who’s waiting for an acquaintance with a can of beer in hand and flicking through social media feeds and comic book apps on his smartphone.
“I rarely buy books unless there’s something I specifically need,” says the used car parts dealer who’s in his late 30s and hails from neighboring Saitama Prefecture. “And besides, it's difficult to read physical books when you’re moving or holding something.”
According to a 2018 survey by the government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, 47.3% of respondents said they hadn’t read a single book in a month, while 67.3% said they are reading less. These statistics reflect a concerning trend for readers: Over one-fourth of Japan’s 1,741 municipalities no longer have any bookstores, according to a 2022 study by the Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture.
“A lack of bookstores erodes reading habits,” says Nisshoren secretary general Kazuyuki Ishii. “E-commerce sites like Amazon and Rakuten can’t fill the void. The mere existence of a bookshop contributes to that area’s reading culture.”
Starting a bookstore is no easy feat, however, and could cost tens of millions of yen depending on the amount of floor space. Besides finding affordable property and employees, bookshop owners need substantial capital to stock their store’s shelves with new titles before opening. And for each publication sold, booksellers typically earn around 22% or 23% of the sales price — it's a low-margin, high-volume enterprise. Add to that the drop in sales in recent years of magazines, once the primary moneymaker, and it's not a vocation for entrepreneurs looking to earn quick cash.
There’s a distinct system in place, too. The three major players in Japan’s book business are the publisher, the wholesale distributor and the bookseller. A fixed price for publications is set by publishers under the resale price maintenance system, enabling the distribution of a wide variety of titles in small volumes and making possible royalty payments for books with a small circulation.
Publishers generally do business with distributors on a consignment basis, with the distributor then selling books and magazines to the retail market on a returnable basis, meaning booksellers can return unsold publications within a set period of time in order to avoid stocking up on unpopular titles, which now applies to around 40% of cases.
The distributors, the big two being Nippon Shuppan Hanbai Inc. — more widely known as “Nippan” — and Tohan Corp., then, are essentially intermediaries between publishers and bookstores.
And with roughly 200 or so publications released every day, most bookstores have relied on these distributors to choose and deliver what they sell. In other words, the selection of books that are key to sales has largely been influenced by the algorithms of the distributors, not by the tastes and strategies of bookstore owners and clerks.
This system functioned well during the heyday of bookstores, Ishii says, “when everything flew off the shelves.” When he joined his organization back in 1987, Ishii recalls, there were around 25,000 bookstores, 10 distributors and about 4,000 publishers in Japan compared to roughly 3,000 operating now.
“But the age of mass publications resulting in mass profits is over — the system itself is getting old,” Ishii says, adding that, with book sales waning, stores are now looking for more original selections to cater to their particular consumer demographics and a system that allows them to do so.
Creating ‘touchpoints’
On any given weekday, more than 80,000 passengers pass through Tokyo Metro’s Tameike-Sanno subway station located near the National Diet Building and the Prime Minister’s Office.
There’s no kindly antiquarian suggesting novels and magazines to prospective readers here. Instead, inside a white and blue storefront, titles are arranged on shelves for passersby to peruse at their leisure and purchase at automatic checkouts — no employees necessary.
“Despite the high volume of passengers, there are no bookstores around here,” says Kotaro Minami, Nippan’s brand manager for Hontasu, Japan’s first completely staff-free bookstore. The distributor opened it inside the station in September last year.
Sitting at a Starbucks across the underground passageway from Hontasu, Minami explains how, according to Nippan’s estimate, a bookstore is considered a viable business if there are 30,000 commuters using a nearby station. “But even when bringing up that threshold to 50,000, there are 83 stations in Tokyo and its three surrounding prefectures that don’t have enough bookstores.”
Nippan’s unmanned bookstore is the distributor's answer to the current crisis impacting the industry. A chronic labor shortage has seen wage costs grow, while the fall in the number of booksellers naturally translates to less opportunities for people to interact with physical books, something those in the industry refer to as “touch points.”
“As a distributor, our sales are directly impacted by the falling number of bookstores, so we feel compelled to think of a sustainable business model for shops to survive,” Minami says. “And while it’s difficult to reduce rent, labor costs could be cut by operating a staff-less store.”
To enter Hontasu, customers need to access a QR code using their smartphones via the Line messaging app. All payments are cashless, and security cameras monitor the isles during operating hours. Minami says that so far, on average, around 200 to 250 people visit the bookstore on weekdays, of which roughly 40% make purchases.
The plan is to open another three to five directly managed Hontasu shops during the current fiscal year, and have another 30 bookstores adopt the unmanned system in the same period. “Over the next three years, we’d like to see around 100 bookshops use our system,” Minami says.
Hontasu is among the new business models the industry has seen in recent years. Nippan also operates Bunkitsu, a chic store in Roppongi that doubles as a cafe and workspace, and which requires a ¥1,650 ($10.70) entrance fee, allowing guests to read and buy curated books.
“The idea is to increase touch points where consumers can interact with bookstores,” Minami says. “Or else bookshops are really going to disappear.”
Shared shelves
It has been a year since Masayuki Waki moved his bookshop from the hipster neighborhood of Shimokitazawa to a two-story house near Soshigaya-Okura Station, farther west in Tokyo’s residential Setagaya Ward.
The first floor of the establishment is packed with shelves selling both used and new publications ranging from children’s picture books to English novels. Each shelf has an owner who rents the space for ¥4,400 ($28.50) a month.
Waki, an author and writer specializing in bookstores, opened his outlet, Bookshop Traveller, in 2018, and is one of the pioneers in the trend of renting out shelves.
“It’s a stable yet not very profitable business model,” he says. “But it’s fun, and the shop functions as a hub for book lovers as well as an event space and a place for promotional activities.”
The system, called tanagashi (literally, “renting out shelves”) serves multiple purposes. It’s a low-risk entry point for those aspiring to open their own bookstore and is good PR for booksellers that want their brand to be known to a wider audience.
In fact, similar shared shops have been cropping up across Japan, allowing bibliophiles to interact with each other and foster a sense of community.
In Jimbocho, for example, a shared bookstore called Passage opened in 2022. The shop is inspired by the shopping streets of Paris and features sets of shelves named after streets in France, each operated by a different owner. Also, later this month, Naoki Prize-winning author Shogo Imamura is opening Honmaru, another similar bookstore in Jimbocho that allows both individuals and businesses to rent shelves.
As a writer, Waki primarily focuses on covering so-called independent bookstores. While the term can also apply to old-school mom-and-pop shops, it’s now mostly used to refer to smaller shops with a distinct edge, including mixed-space enterprises where books are sold alongside clothes, coffee, stationary and other goods and services.
“The stereotype for what bookstores must be gradually dissolved starting in the early 2000s and now encompasses various forms,” Waki says, adding that the number of these new bookstores has been growing, with 100 or so opening last year.
The structural issues the industry harbors remain, however, along with the demographic woes affecting the economy. Waki says many new bookshop owners give up after two or three years, overwhelmed by the work and investments necessary in keeping their businesses going.
“It’s hard to imagine magazines making a comeback, while the shrinking population will likely see more people flock to bigger cities where floorspace comes at a premium,” Waki says. “And in that scenario, the distribution system as it is may not be sustainable.”
That doesn’t mean Japan’s book reading culture is facing certain demise, though. The history of papyrus dates back thousands of years, and the significance of physical books can’t be overstated, Waki says; there’s a sense of possession lacking with e-books. The various new forms through which books are being sold now is testament to their enduring allure.
The focus, then, is to find a way that allows these new bookstores and owners to survive, Waki says, for which an industry-wide brainstorming session is happening right now.
“There’s no need to be pessimistic,” he says. “Perhaps there’s not much we can do about the falling population, but we want to somehow preserve the book-loving community and its ecosystem, as well as the joy of reading a physical product.”
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