| As an important component of the national economy, publishing industry directly influences the economic prosperity and social stability. The development of publishing industry is very important for culture spreading, the improvement of national quality, the stability of the public order, interpersonal contact and so on. As an important component of the cultural industry, it does not only fulfill the economic function but also perform the ideological function. The level of a country's publishing industry development symbolizes the level of this country's economy, science, education and culture development. Publishing industry is an important part of a country's soft power; a country's publishing industry and its civilization and education are complementary. Publishing industry is more than an economic issue; it is a social issue and a political issue.From a macro point of view, publishing industry has four characteristics: First, it takes industry as a means of development; Secondly, it uses culture as a resource to carry out production, provide publications and services for the society; thirdly, its purpose is to meet consumers'needs for spiritual and cultural life; fourthly, it also has knowledge-intensive, high in technology and high value-added features.From the micro-perspective, publishing industry mainly has economic characteristics as follows: it the double attribute of general merchandise and ideological products, low entry barriers and large number of enterprises, unobvious scale advantages and low concentration, uncertainty of the sales, diversification of the market demand, variety of the products, low degree of difference and great homogeneity, serious asymmetry of supply and demand information, supply and market information, language barriers and the limit of internationalization, etc.As the great economic power, Japan is only second to the United States in the world, and its publishing power has won worldwide recognition.1995-2005,the value (sales) of books published by USA accounts for 32% in total; Germany 10%, Japan 9% and UK 5% rank from 2nd to 4th. Through short-term adjustment after the war, Japan's publishing industry has far exceeded the rapid development of economy till 1960s while it continues to rise in the state. The level of Japan's per-capita book consumption came first in the world. In the mid 1990s, publishing industry first entered the era of negative growth with Japan's economic bubble dashed. The retreat insisted and it fell for six consecutive years. It didn't rebound from the bottom until 2004, but that was only a flash in the pan. Then it hit consecutive decline again. Such changes in Japan's publishing industry development cause great concern of the world publishing industry.The ups and downs of Japan's publishing industry have their own laws and characteristics.From the start of Meiji Restoration, Japan set"educational foundation" as the target. The rapid development of education and major breakthroughs of modern printing technology provide a powerful support for the rapid development of its publishing industry. Japan's publishing industry develops rapidly with the rise of the modernization. Speaking Society, Iwanami, primary Museum, the "Friends of Housewives," "Junior Club" and a number of major publishing houses and magazines have been founded. Domestic implementation of the Japanese military nationalism has continued to become stronger. So does the modern Japanese publishing industry. Modern Japanese publishing industry was encouraged by the emergence of militarism and developed, and it also reached the verge of collapse because its militarism was defeated. During World War II, Japan's publishing industry was under the control of fascist militarism. On one hand, it talked glibly and lobby for the external aggression of Japanese militarism, and it became Japan's external aggression accomplices; on the other hand, it was caught in difficulties because of lack of printing materials and wartime controls.Modern Japan's publishing industry began after the war. U.S. occupation authorities implemented a democratic policy of punishing war criminals, freedom of speech and publication. In the publishing industry, U.S. weakened monopoly capital strength to support the development of pluralism. In the mid 1950s, Japan's publishing industry was completely out of the valley, and there was an unprecedented new climate. Till 1954, it has surpassed "the pre-war level".Japan's postwar economic "miracle" stimulated Japan's publishing industry's high-speed leap. 1931 publishers of more than 4000, which is existing in Japan, was founded in 1960s or 1970s. In 1956 the sales of publications was 58.77 billion yen; in 1975 it rose to 976.59 billion yen, with an increase of 16.62 times. In 20 consecutive years, the average annual increase was 15.2%, with four annual growths of over 20%, much higher than Japan's high-speed development of the national economy growth in the same period. This is a miracle in the history of development of the Japanese publishing industry.In the mid 1970s, influenced by the "fourth Middle East War," "the world's oil crisis" Japan's publishing industry has entered a slow growth period of stability with the slowdown of the Japanese economy.Japan's publishing industry, policies, structures and property relations, enterprise management, human resources development and management systems, operations, and Japanese publications circulation system has its notable features. The main property rights system of Japanese publishing enterprise is the system of joint-stock company which based on private ownership. And it has prominent nature of family; the majority of press shares does not have a large distribution but relatively concentrated. Because of the less capital, the less transparent and more risky business, few publishers are listed companies. Most of them are internal management possession shares or united by the industry association mutual shareholdings. Same as Japan's traditional management model, the general do not adopt the separation of ownership and management like American management style, but adopt the combination of ownership and management, with the chairman being general manager concurrently. So does the Speaking Society, Primary Museum and other large traditional publishers.Japan's publishing industry shows dealers (wholesale) was small in the middle while manufacturers (press) and retailers (bookstore) are large in the two ends, which has formed the dumbbell-shaped structure of industry chain. That is a very important characteristic of the Japan's publishing industry. More than 80% of Japan's publishing industry concentrated in Tokyo, most of which are small in scales and less in capital. But the concentration of Japan's publishing industry was relatively higher than the rest of the world. Its product mix has special features: First, the Japanese comic books are the main pillar of the publishing industry. Japan is a big comic country, comic magazines and booklet distribution accounts for 45% of the total. Second, magazine sales are higher than book. In the long-term development process, book sales have been below publications, in the basic ratio between 4:6 and 5:5. 8:2 is the turnover ratio of some publishers'books and magazines. Japanese magazine sales far exceed the books, which is also unique in the world. The minority of products makes up the majority of profits.Japan's cultural industry has become the third largest industry in Japan. Manga industry exports over the steel industry, and animation has penetrated into the world. In 2002, Japan's cultural industry market has reached 84 trillion yen, about GDP 16.5%. Publishing industry sales are 2.3 trillion yen, about 2.75% of the culture industry, accounting for GDP 0.45% that year. Japan relies mainly on market mechanism to develop the cultural industry, but the government-led characteristic is also obvious: the government strongly support, develop and facilitate cultural industries, and formulate relevant policy of publishing industry. That is a fundamental reason for the development of Japan's publishing industry.In July 1996, Japan Cultural Office formally proposed "the 21st century culture statehood plan" and established "cultural foundation" strategy. In 1998 as Japan took the 21 century as the century in which Japan would rely on their own cultural resources and cultural advantages to start a new development; in 2001 Japan built intellectual property strategies as foundation and clearly proposed Japan would become the world's first intellectual property country within 10 years while actively implementing overseas market strategy. Japan, having been called the "Kingdom of Manga", is the world's largest animation production and exporting countries. More than 60% of the current global broadcast Manga and comics come from Japan.Japan's postwar publishing industry grew rapidly in double-digit from 1955 to 1975; from 1976-1996 the annual growth rate reduced to one median; after 1996 it had major changes. Nine out of ten years had declines and that is unprecedented. It not only accompanies Japan's economic bubbles, but also closely related to the cumulative self-contradictions of Japanese society and the publishing industry development. Of course, there are some reasons such as readers'increasingly diversified demand, the significantly reduced number of issued best-selling books, but the most fundamental is the long-term result of the overall economic downturn hovering in Japan, which makes a large number of readers'disappointed towards future and therefore became indifferent to the publications. The year-by-year declining Japan's birth rate, the irrational internal structure of industries and other reasons has also brought many negative factors to the development of the publishing industry. For a long time, Japan excessively developed the publication for the public, but it neglected to guide and support educational and professional publication, which caused the serious imbalance between industrial structure and product mix. Meanwhile, circulation institutional factors have harassed Japan's publishing industry development for a long time. Moreover, in recent years the rise of networks, "phone enthusiasm" and the development of public libraries have brought great impact to the publishing industry.Since 2003, Japan's national economy as a whole has slowly relieved from the shadow of the bubble economy. However, Japan's publishing industry is still not out of the valley. The author believes to breakthrough the bottleneck of Japan's publishing industry, the following two problems should be mainly addressed:On the one hand, the government regulations should be appropriately adjusted, and macro-control efforts and effectiveness should be strengthened. According to the law, the monopoly situation in the publishing industry caused by the convert means of big publishers, wholesalers, printing companies and other related business shareholders should be lifted to enhance the industry's competitiveness and vitality.The system of publication circulation should be adjusted. The biggest issues in Japanese circulation are: one is monopolization, and the other is the vicious cycle. Through anti-trust issues the first problem could be solved, while the second question could be eased and improved by the government's regulatory system for circulation.Adjust the industrial policy; support and guide the education publishing and professional publishing; regulate industrial structure and product mix to a reasonable state; develop educational publishing, professional publishing and the mass publication harmoniously; upgrade the product mix. As long as the policies are right and Japanese education level and professional standards highly developed, addressing structural problems is not a difficult matter.The public library books may have tax relief or subsidies and other economic policies in a corresponding schedule. The interests of the publishers and copyright should be protected.On the other hand, rely on the enterprises'own innovation.The first is innovation. Japanese publishing enterprises must strengthen institutional innovation, increase incentive and competition elements in the system. To solve the lack of impetus, its system must be innovated for increasing competition and incentives and enhancing their flexibility and adaptability.The second is product innovation. Product innovations are mainly innovations in content and form. Content innovations can be taken as creativity, which is the soul and vitality of the publishing industry development. "Once the culture doesn't have creativity, the works will not have its own characteristics so that there will be no vitality."The third is technological innovation. Asymmetry and on-demand publishing and other problems of the publishing industry must be solved through technical innovation. Japan's digital printing technology has made significant progress. With technological innovation and application, technical problems which troubled Japanese Publishing Industry Development will be cracked.Japan's postwar development of publishing industry has provided a lot of valuable experience and useful inspiration for publishing industry in the world, especially those in the developing countries."The foundation of Japan"is the rare valuable experience for publishing industries in developing countries: Cultural industrial policy, corporate governance separation, and operating regulations of the State administration system, fully competition and clear property rights and business organizations, clear ideas of publication such as interaction with the society, diversified human resources development and management system, the team spirit as the core of the enterprise culture, a total of logistics and information, strategies of the comics business, cultural output and international market development, new technology development and application.At the same time, to maintain a rational industrial structure and product mix is also a very important issue in the development process of publishing industry.The trend of China's publishing industry has just started. To avoid pitfalls, we can study and learn from a large number of industrial theory, experience and lessons in the development of the Japanese publishing industry.
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