Bookstores are disappearing on the streets of Japan.

According to the "Japan Times" report on the 25th, data from the Japan Publishing Infrastructure Center shows that in 2012, there were 16,722 bookstores in Japan, and in 2022, the number will drop to 11,952, a decrease of nearly 30% in 10 years. To this end, the operators racked their brains to keep the bookstore open.

Located in Koriyama City, Fukushima Prefecture, "Takashima Bookstore" is a 72-year-old bookstore. The bookstore is densely packed with books, magazines, picture books, etc., but there are no customers. Still, the bookstore remains profitable.

The owner of the store, Takashima Mizuo, said, "The bookstore's sales only account for less than 10% of the total revenue, while the remaining 90% mainly comes from the purchase of school libraries and public libraries." Takashima said that if the local government department that manages the library purchases from local bookstores, it will help the stable operation of the local bookstore, which is also the key to the local bookstore's operation.

However, "Takashima Study" is only one of the few successful business cases, and more bookstores are still facing the risk of bankruptcy. Kazuyuki Ishii, director of the Japan Bookstore Business Association, believes that the number of bookstores will continue to decrease in the future. "The reduction of bookstores will lead to a decrease in the number of reading people, and thus, it is likely to fall into a vicious circle."

In recent years, Japanese people who like to visit bookstores have become more and more depressed. They found that the "bookstores" that used to be everywhere are becoming hard to find. They used to be able to find them after a short walk, and now they even have to take a few trams or subways.

However, bookstores in European and American countries are still relatively “strong” and stand firm in the Internet age. Why are there fewer and fewer bookstores that have been deeply embedded in Japanese life for a long time, and will they disappear in the future? Many Japanese are asking.

The reason for the sharp decline in Japanese bookstores is not only the inability to sell books but also the unique structure of the publishing industry in Japan. In addition to books, Japanese bookstores also sell a lot of magazines. A bookstore with colorful new magazines lined up every day is one of Japan's "landscapes." In other countries, bookstores generally sell books, and magazines are often sold at newsstands and other places.

However, since the beginning of the 21st century, with the popularity of the Internet and portable terminals, the magazine market in Japan has begun to shrink rapidly. Magazine sales in Japan fell to 654.8 billion yen in 2017, down from 715.2 billion yen in book sales and less than half of what they were at their peak.

This directly hit the Japanese publishing industry, which relies heavily on magazine revenue, not only the comprehensive distribution company suffered serious losses, but the operation of small and medium-sized bookstores was also in trouble.

Bookstores in Japan, especially the traditional corner bookstores centered on magazine sales, located around stations and shopping streets, are rapidly disappearing.