Central, Local Govts Working to Revitalize Bookstores; Cooperation with Libraries Among Measures Employed

By Shin Kitamura and Kazuyuki Uda / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers

20:00 JST, April 25, 2025

The central and local governments are increasingly interested in supporting bookstores after The Yomiuri Shimbun and Kodansha Ltd. announced a joint proposal for revitalizing bookstores in February.

The proposal positions bookstores as cultural hubs that connect people with books and as a source of national strength and calls for addressing the five issues of reducing the burden on bookstores in introducing cashless payment systems; promoting the digital transformation of bookstores using IC tags; boosting cooperation between local bookstores and libraries; creating an environment that makes it easier to open new bookstores; and utilizing picture book specialists and other specialists.

The topic of boosting cooperation between local bookstores and libraries is attracting particular attention at the moment. In fiscal 2024, 256 municipalities, or 15% of all municipalities nationwide, had neither a public library nor a bookstore, according to a Yomiuri Shimbun tally based on data from the Japan Library Association and the Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, both based in Tokyo.

At the joint general meeting, The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings President Toshikazu Yamaguchi said: “Most municipalities that have no bookstores have no libraries either. A widening disparity in knowledge between urban and rural areas is a serious issue.”

In the town of Yuzawa, Niigata Prefecture, a stationery shop that had sold novels, children’s books and comics stopped selling them after it relocated to another location in 2023. While there is a “library room” in a community hall in the town, the number of books in the library room is limited. For that reason, many residents in the town drive for 30 to 60 minutes to a library in the neighboring city of Minami-Uonuma, in the same prefecture, to borrow books.

Municipalities with no library or bookstore, like Yuzawa, now account for over 30% of all municipalities in five prefectures: Aomori, Fukushima, Nara, Kumamoto and Okinawa.

Takenori Noguchi, a professor of library information studies at Senshu University, said: “Not only are libraries and bookstores places for reading books but they also serve as local knowledge hubs where people can interact with those of different generations and get an idea of trends. Without them, we might lose a wellspring of culture.”

Council created

The central government is also working to address this serious situation, which could lead to cultural disparities among regions. At the joint general meeting, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry reported that it had embarked on a project to build book-loving communities, including through collaboration between bookstores and public libraries, aiming to improve the reading environment in communities.

The ministry has designated six municipalities and two organizations to take part in the project during its first fiscal year. Each of these designated municipalities is supposed to create a council comprising members from the local board of education, libraries, bookstores and other institutions to improve the reading environment in their communities. The ministry is also considering introducing a program in which libraries purchase books from local bookstores and a system in which people can borrow from local bookstores books owned by libraries.

The Cultural Affairs Agency will start a new “initiative to promote the utilization of assets for print culture,” supporting activities by authors such as reading events and exhibitions held in cooperation with bookstores, literature museums, publishers, universities and others.

Prepaid book gift cards

An increasing number of municipalities across the nation are providing prepaid book gift cards for children to support their reading environment. The Miyazaki municipal government will offer ¥5,000 prepaid book gift cards to about 63,700 children aged 18 or younger. “While prices are increasing, we want children to continue to read and cultivate their abilities to think,” an official at the municipal government’s childcare support department said.

The joint proposal also calls for the utilization of professionals to promote reading, such as specialists with professional knowledge about picture books. “It is necessary to make picture book specialists known to more people to support their activities,” a lawmaker who participated in the meeting said.