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发表于 2011-11-3 16:40:58
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VOX POPULI: The print industry is suffering but text is alive
Japan's first postwar blockbuster, titled "Nichibei Kaiwa Techo" (A handbook of Japanese-American conversation), was published one month after the end of World War II. Kikumatsu Ogawa (1888-1962), the founder of Seibundo Shinkosha Publishing Co., was responsible for this. He learned of Japan's defeat while traveling and, distraught at the turn of events, hit upon the idea of the handbook.
Ogawa brought a 32-page manuscript written by an employee to Dai Nippon Printing Co., which had not been destroyed in the bombings. It is said that necessity is the mother of invention.Orders poured in from across the nation as the occupational forces began to be stationed across Japan. The booklet sold 3.6 million copies. "One should readily put one's ideas to practice. This is an indispensable factor in impromptu publishing," Ogawa recalled in "Nihon Shuppankai no Ayumi" (A history of Japanese publishing industry).
According to Ogawa, books on democracy and Japan's defeat started to appear in the fall of 1945, ushering in "an age in which anything in print sold well." Books kept by readers in urban areas had been burned in air raids. Hunger for print culture supported the publishing industry as it, too, built itself back up from scratch.
Even now, with the publishing industry in a slump, text is alive. Electronic books, cellphone novels and the various opinions inundating the Internet rely on written texts. The only difference is that the medium has switched from paper to electronic screens. There must be young people who will stay in the print world.
Some people, who have got used to reading on screens, are cutting out the pages of their books and scanning them into their computers. This practice has been dubbed "jisui" (cooking for oneself). Businesses handling the cutting and scanning for readers are doing well and friction with publishers and writers worried about the possible spread of pirated copies is intensifying.
One of the reasons for the popularity of such services is said to be the poor selection of electronic books. Old publishing industry officials must miss the postwar era, when there was a shortage of paper because books were selling like hotcakes. It would not be a bad idea to spend Culture Day talking about the merits and demerits of the trend away from paper while sampling self-prepared food.
--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 3 |
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