Nearly 30 percent of municipalities in Japan have no physical bookstores due to the impact of population shrinkage and the prevalence of online stores, according to a survey by a publishing industry association.
Of the country's 1,741 municipalities, 482 cities, towns and villages, or 27.7 percent of the total, had no bookstores as of March, with the rate increasing from 26.2 percent in the previous survey in September 2022, according to data released by the Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture.
In the prefectures of Okinawa, Nagano and Nara, more than half of their cities, towns and villages had no bookstores at all, with the rate standing at 56.1 percent, 53.2 percent and 51.3 percent, respectively.
Rural areas suffering depopulation have been particularly hit by vanishing bookstores, while all 23 wards in central Tokyo still had bookstores.
The central government has been searching for effective measures to prevent physical bookstores from disappearing. They are considered important for expanding knowledge by offering opportunities to discover books outside one's usual interests, in contrast to the online trend of narrowly tailored searches for specific interests.
Currently, there are 7,973 real bookstores, excluding secondhand bookstores and university cooperatives, across Japan, down 609 from the previous survey, which was the first of its kind.
Combining the 343 municipalities with just one physical bookstore and those with none, the overall percentage of cities, towns, and villages with limited or no access to physical bookstores stands at 47.4 percent.
Estimated sales of physical books and magazines also dwindled 6 percent in 2023 from the previous year to about 1.06 trillion yen ($6.7 billion), a downward trend that has continued since peaking at 2.66 trillion yen in 1996, according to the Research Institute for Publications.
"The environment (surrounding bookstores) becomes harsher as personnel costs rise while sales are down," said Shuichi Matsuki, an executive of the Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture.
Matsuki added that bookstores, in cooperation with publishers and writers, need to make their stores more attractive to customers.
Industry minister Ken Saito, following discussing with bookstore managers this month, expressed his vision of "aiming for a world where libraries, online sites and bookstores coexist."
His ministry launched a project team to promote the bookstore business in March.
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