Japan faces shortage of foreign magazines

The shortage is being felt by all the bookstores that stock foreign magazines and books nationwide, said Makoto Moroyama, a reporter for Shinbunka newspaper, which specializes in the publishing industry.

“Yohan’s bankruptcy was too sudden and it is taking a long time for other book distributors to establish a supply system,” he said. “Simply put, they do not have the knowhow for handling large volumes of foreign magazines and books.”

No statistics are available on the size of the market for foreign magazines and books, or on how big a hold Yohan had.

Moroyama said Yohan probably controlled about 95 percent of the market for foreign magazines, while a Tokyo-based market researcher said the figure was at least 80 percent.

Yohan, founded in 1953, commanded about half of the market for foreign books, Moroyama said.

The situation in Japan was rare in that one company effectively dominated the entire market, he said. Many publications, like Time and Newsweek, are rivals, so they usually prefer to use different distributors, he said.

Only a handful of the 1,000 or so foreign magazines Yohan was dealing in are now being distributed, Moroyama said.

But three companies — Japan Publication Trading Co., Nippon Shuppan Hanbai Inc. and Kinokuniya Co. — are taking over some of the titles.

Tokyo-based Japan Publication Trading, which imports and exports books, CDs and DVDs, said it has signed contracts with 400 magazines, all from the United States.

But in reality, the only magazines the company is properly supplying are Time and Fortune, Moroyama said.

Other companies are in the process of buying up distribution rights to the magazines Yohan once sold, but it will take some time for the supply situation to return to its previous state.

For more information on the Yohan bankruptcy, check out these articles in the Yomiuri and Publisher’s Weekly.