Forum - View topic

NEWS: Manga Market in Japan Shrinks for 1st Time in 7 Years in 2025

Data on Japan’s publishing market show that domestic manga sales fell almost 2 percent in 2025 to ¥693 billion (US$4.45 billion), making it the first time in eight years that the country’s manga market has shrunk. Growth in digital manga, which makes up three-quarters of the total market, has slowed to the point where it can no longer reliably offset tumbling print manga sales.

Digital manga’s slowdown quickened as the year progressed. During the first six months of the year, digital manga sales grew at an annual rate of 4.6 percent, according to data compiled by the Research Institute for Publications, an arm of the All Japan Magazine and Book Publishers and Editors Association. In the second half of the year, however, that growth rate slumped to just 1.5 percent.

Falling sales revenue does not imply that Japan is publishing fewer manga. In fact, publishers released more than 16,000 new manga volumes last year, which is 6.5 percent more releases than in 2024. That is the largest annual increase since around 2008.

I can't give a definitive answers on why is this happening in Japan. I could cite the price hike due to rising production costs as a reason, but that's not the only factor from what I've read.

mdo7 wrote:

I can't give a definitive answers on why is this happening in Japan. I could cite the price hike due to rising production costs as a reason, but that's not the only factor from what I've read.

Rising production costs maybe is one thing - but economic situation in Japan with weakened yen and rising with inflation prices for living in Japan as a whole feels more like the case, considering we're talking about the domestic market.

I think it may be related to Japan's low birth rate: fewer people means less interest in manga, so fierce competition to 'catch' those readers is driving the release of more and more titles. This also helps to explain the isekai trend: they are clutching at anything that seems to be working.

I would bet on less readers (denatality, but mostly switch toward watchable content, not readable content as entertainement, path of less resistence), who have less money to spend (inflation) and choose only free content to enjoy.
It will worsen.
There are free campaigns for manga (new or old chapters) so people will only read if it's free.
They'll buy only if they are REALLY fans of a series.

Here's my question I like to ask you: Does Japan have a literacy crisis amongst the youth population, have you ever seen anything similar to this in Japan? If Japan does have a literacy crisis similar to the US that we international/American anime and manga fans were not aware of or didn't know about, could that also be attributing to the manga market decline over there?

I can't speak for other countries that may have their own literacy crisis in their own reading in their languages, but if Japan has a reading/illiteracy crisis similar to the US and many of us in America didn't know about it, I would find that disturbing.

From all the interviews, youtube videos from specialists I've seen (in Japanese), young people just use smartphones (they can't even use computers, teachers have to teach them in JHS and HS), prefer videos over books (they read a lot in elementary school because they don't have their own smartphone + mandatory readings but it's less and less afterwards) but they speed up the speed of the videos because it's too slow for them. They prefer getting the info through review videos instead of reading books/watching movies.
One thing that stroke me is that young Japanese want to read manga/watch anime, but for free. A lot of students I had in HS were consuming pirated content (manga/anime/music) and it was normal for them because it was available easily. So maybe the Japanese are used to pirating now too.

One other study in Japanese showed that fujoshi were buying the most, teenagers are buying tankobon more (because no credit card) while adults are consuming more free stuff/buying digital on manga apps (they have a credit card).

I was a tenured HS teacher in Japan for 10 years (not anymore) and I could read kanji that some students couldn't. Of course, a lot of the other students could read kanji that I couldn't read. I would say that 10% of our students couldn't read some kanji learned in elementary school. Their first year in HS, Japanese teachers would teach one more time all the kanji studied in JHS.

There is a literacy crisis, sure, but denatality too, so a lot of students who couldn't get into HS before that have seats in HS for them now. Teachers have to lower the level of class contents to not fail them.

Students can't focus anymore, irritability and violence from young pupils toward their teachers occur because they can't handle frustration (screen time + reward system destroyed aka dopamine).