In recent years, it’s become common to hear that children are reading less and less, and the numbers seem to bear that out.
According to the PISA survey (which measures the academic performance of 15-year-olds worldwide), Japan ranked fourth in reading literacy in 2012. By 2015 it had slipped to eighth, and by 2018, all the way down to fifteenth. In another survey of cram school teachers, 82% said they felt that “students with weak reading comprehension have increased.”
Of course, PISA rankings are relative, Japan’s score may have fallen in part because other countries improved. But it seems hard to deny that Japanese students’ overall reading ability is in decline.
Dr. Noriko Arai of the National Institute of Informatics once created a deceptively simple test of Japanese reading comprehension, known as the Alexandra Syntax Problem. It goes like this:
“Alex” is a name used for both males and females. It is a short form of “Alexandra,” a female name, but also of “Alexander,” a male name.
Question: In this context, what is the nickname for “Alexandra”?
(1) Alex (2) Alexander (3) Male (4) Female
At first glance, it seems almost childishly easy. Yet, according to Arai’s research, only 38% of public junior high students answered correctly—and even among students at elite high schools, the accuracy rate was only 65%. (The correct answer, of course, is (1) Alex.)
How one interprets this result may vary, but to me the conclusion is clear: when people stop reading, they lose their grasp of language. A Benesse survey found that 49% of students reported spending zero minutes reading for pleasure on a typical weekday. The average reading time fell from 18.2 minutes per day in 2015 to 15.2 minutes in 2022. In another study, the average number of books read per month by elementary school students dropped from 9.1 in 1989 to just 3.1 in 2019.
And this decline in reading comprehension isn’t confined to children. Browse the comment sections of online news articles, and you’ll find countless people unable to understand even a few lines of text accurately. They react to single words without grasping context, twist arguments beyond recognition, and before long, the discussion devolves into personal attacks. We’ve all seen it happen, and it’s disheartening every time.
A brief digression: my favorite local bookstore closed its doors this spring. Of course, we can still buy books online or read them digitally, but I can’t help preferring paper. I love the scent of ink and paper when I open a book, the quiet sound of a page turning, the feel of it between my fingers, and that tactile memory of knowing a particular line was “somewhere near the bottom left of page 120.” Reading, to me, is not a purely visual act; it’s a sensory experience. And I like having my favorite books as tangible companions, resting quietly on the shelf.
In today’s world, loneliness has become almost the default condition of modern life. Social media may have been invented to connect people, but somewhere along the way it turned into a machine that amplifies isolation.
That’s why I love reading. Reading allows us to enjoy solitude—to walk through another person’s thoughts, trace the author’s mind, sense the world between the lines. You can’t read at a party or while chatting with friends.
