Japanese Children Are Reading Less Manga & Other Books As Smartphones Take Up Their Free Time, Survey Reports

Japanese children are increasingly turning away from books and manga, with smartphones potentially replacing reading as a way to spend their free time, according to a 2026 survey by the School Library Association of Japan.

The survey was conducted in June and gathered responses from 10,061 students in fourth grade through the third year of high school across 123 schools nationwide.

The survey, which examined manga reading habits for the first time, found that 28.2% of elementary school students did not read any manga in a month.

The figure climbed to 40.2% among junior high school students and 50.8% among high school students.

Book reading showed a similar pattern among younger students.

The percentage of elementary school students who did not read a single book in a month reached 13.4%, rising 3.8 percentage points from the previous year. It was the fifth consecutive annual increase and the first time the rate had crossed 10% in 25 years.

The book non-reading rate was higher among older students, reaching 24% for junior high school students and 49.7% for high school students.

The findings reflect a broader decline in Japan’s manga reading habits.

Weekly Shonen Jump, published by Shueisha, recorded an average certified print circulation of 985,000 copies between April and June 2026, falling below one million for the first time. No print magazine in Japan currently has a certified circulation above that mark.

Publishing industry researcher Ichishi Iida also reported earlier this year that monthly magazine readership among middle and junior high school students had fallen from around 10 titles during the 1980s to just one in 2025.

Iida’s analysis of surveys conducted between 1985 and 2023 suggested that manga readership among Japanese children and teenagers has declined across both print and digital formats.

The findings come despite decades of efforts to encourage reading in schools. After Japan designated 2000 as the “Year of Children’s Reading,” schools expanded reading initiatives, and the book non-reading rate among elementary school students remained below 10% from 2002 onward.

In a report published in March, an expert panel at Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology suggested that providing manga in school libraries could encourage more students to visit them.

Takeshi Noguchi, chairman of the School Library Association of Japan and a professor of library and information science at Aoyama Gakuin University, described the decline in reading as a serious concern.

He emphasized the importance of creating more opportunities for children to enjoy reading, such as having children and adults read the same books or manga and discuss their impressions, as well as reading aloud to junior and senior high school students.

Source: Yahoo Japan