October 29, 2025

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

The 79th “Book Week” started on October 27 in Japan. The first Book Week took place in 1947 initiated by publishers, bookstores and public libraries, with the aim of “building a peaceful and cultured nation through the power of reading,” at a time when the scars of war were still visible everywhere.

However, people’s reading habits are rapidly declining. A survey the Agency for Cultural Affairs conducted in 2023 shows that approximately 63% of people read “not even one book” per month. Among high school students, around 48% do not read.

Bookstores are disappearing from many local communities. The number of bookstores halved from about 21,000 in 2003 to 11,000 in 2023. Consequently, municipalities without any bookstores account for about 28% of all municipalities, and including those with only one bookstore, the figure rises to about 47%.

When asked how they choose books, the most common answer in the survey was “at a bookstore” (about 58%), while about 33% said “on the Internet.” This suggests that the absence of neighborhood bookstores is hindering people’s reading habits.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s project team promoting bookshops reports that compared to Western countries and South Korea, government spending on culture in Japan is very low. The report states that both the ratio of the culture budget to the total and per capita spending is also low.”

In contrast, France obliges both central and local governments to guarantee citizens’ opportunities for reading, implementing policies to encourage reading among all age groups, including toddlers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the country handed out “culture passes” for young people, worth up to 150 euro each. Many teenagers used them to buy books, resulting in the purchase of 14.5 million books.

Japan should also adopt a policy of allocating a substantial budget as a political responsibility to increase the number of libraries, improve and expand library services, and revitalize bookshops in order to encourage people to read more books.