A bookstore in Jinbocho, Tokyo’s main secondhand bookstore district Dear readers, as you know, I love reading and books and have devoted a few stories to those subjects. Japan has long been a country of readers. It is said that the literacy rate of adult males living in Edo (today’s Tokyo) at the end of the Edo period (1860s) exceeded
"Sadly, you can't stop progress. You can try to enforce things through legislation and so forth, but if people don't want to go into bookshops to buy books, then how can any government make them?
I've worked in the magazine/newspaper industry since 1986 and watched the gradual decline in sales (not to mention the number of bookshops and newsagencies along the way). It's just the inevitable way of things now that we have the internet.
Will hard-copy books and magazines vanish? I don't think so, not in my lifetime at least - but they'll become more niche and cater for older audiences till the audiences die out."
I'm afraid he is right, and I know it's a generation thing, but it sucks. It's also very sad that many youngsters are gradually losing this tactile experience of reality besides losing interest in the written word. I just hope books and bookstores will be like vinyl records making a comeback in the future.
One of my readers wrote:
"Sadly, you can't stop progress. You can try to enforce things through legislation and so forth, but if people don't want to go into bookshops to buy books, then how can any government make them?
I've worked in the magazine/newspaper industry since 1986 and watched the gradual decline in sales (not to mention the number of bookshops and newsagencies along the way). It's just the inevitable way of things now that we have the internet.
Will hard-copy books and magazines vanish? I don't think so, not in my lifetime at least - but they'll become more niche and cater for older audiences till the audiences die out."
I'm afraid he is right, and I know it's a generation thing, but it sucks. It's also very sad that many youngsters are gradually losing this tactile experience of reality besides losing interest in the written word. I just hope books and bookstores will be like vinyl records making a comeback in the future.