It should be evident to anyone who rides a commuter train or bus that Japan is a nation of people who take reading seriously. Needless to say, however, their reading habits, and readers¡¯ tastes, have been changing with the times.
¡°In the old days, we¡¯d see salarymen who¡¯d purchase weekly magazines or comic books on the day they went on sale,¡± 7-Eleven Japan President Kazuki Furuya told the Nikkei Marketing Journal (NMJ), a thrice-weekly publication that covers retailing and distribution. ¡°But these days everybody does their reading on their smart phone.¡±
For its page one story for Sept. 4, the NMJ ran the headline ¡°Convenience stores becoming the neighborhood bookshop.¡± I had already taken notice of this phenomenon several weeks earlier, when then window in a nearby Seven-Eleven sported a huge poster to that effect.
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