Ink and Paper Shortage in Japan

POSTED BY DANNY CHOO On Mon 2011/04/04 18:40 JST in Japan

Something not widely reported in foreign media (probably because nuclear panic sells) is the state of emergency that the printing industry has declared - paper and ink in Japan is running out. Had no idea about the situation until I was talking to a publisher yesterday about my next book which is due out this year with Ascii Media Works.

The earthquake damaged a few large paper mills up in the Miyagi prefecture belonging to Nihon Paper Group and Mitsubishi Paper Mills - both of these companies make up 20% of the market share for paper.

Another problem is that the earthquake caused liquefaction of land in Tokyo around the bay area - many buildings started to sink and many roads were destroyed meaning that warehouses used for paper distribution are unusable.

Ink is also in dangerously low supplies too after ink factories were damaged in the quake. The rolling blackouts, shortage of gasoline are also factors affecting the ability for the factories to get back up on their feet again.
The raw ingredients needed to make offset ink, newspaper ink, gravure ink are in particularly low supply.

The shortage of ink and paper is going to have an impact on the publishing industry which has been called on to take special measures to deal with the current situation.
Some industry writers have mentioned that some publications will have to either cut down on the amount of pages in their publications or change the frequency that they go on sale - from once a week to every two weeks for example.
We will also most likely start to see a drop in the amount of colors used in publications to product packaging.

Info from the following resources.
http://www.j-cast.com/2011/03/26091371.html
http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/5450938/
http://news.livedoor.com/article/detail/5451032/
http://www.ink-jpima.org/pdf/20110325.pdf
You can also find more info with the following search query.

So what does this mean for all the lovely 2D girly magazines? I guess we'll have to just wait and find out. Some manga publishers like Shonen Jump have been distributing the last few editions online at Yahoo Japan for free as they currently don't have the ability to print enough.

How do you feel about online/digital publications anyway? Would you rather read/look at paper or pixels or don't mind either?

Anyway, might as well post a stash of photos of mags which I've been meaning to post for a few months now ^^; Most of these publications are available at JList.

Mmmm. Cute floating angel girly.

Leaflet lying around for Onii-chan. We will get the Starchild English portal out this month and promise to announce the winners of the Eri Kitamura signatures. Once again please forgive me for the delay ToT

Megami Creators available at JList. Cover by one of my fave artists Komatsu Eiji.

Touhou!

Very nice bottom artwork by Morisawa Haruyuki.

Nanoha goodies in Megami Magazine.

As usual, Megami magazine comes with a load of health reading too.

Second season starts next week - The World God Only Knows.

The Madoka Magica girls.

Erika Sendo looks good with and without her red uniform.

Type Moon T-Shirt with Newtype.

As you can see I'm rather late uploading these photos ^^; Megami back in Jan came with a calendar.

Mmmm. Pinky LaLa-chan.

Geso.

Otacool 4 was a collaboration with Kotobukiya and Pixiv and featured worldwide illustrations.

Kurot's illustration made it too!

Yamashita Shunya.

Couple O illustrators from the mainland.
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=211913
http://www.pixiv.net/member.php?id=395595

For some reason I'm designing apparel for women - Popteen reference mag.

The works of Choco released as a box O goodies called CHOCOLATE GOUACHE which includes DVDs, posters and a large book.
Choco done the designs for Xenosaga and some of the Busou Shinki series too.