Japanese Market: Women's Magazines

On a weekend night, prepare a nice cup of tea, curl up on the sofa, flip through the pages of a magazine, and enjoy the beautiful layouts of women's information such as fashion, accessories, cosmetics, make-up, love, relationships, and more. Doing so is a heavenly moment for me. I like Japanese women's magazines much better than those of America, although I enjoy reading books in both Japanese and English. If you have time, please check out the Japanese bookstores in your neighborhood. The huge variety of women's magazines will surprise you. When I came to America, I hung out in an American bookstore to check them out and I thought, "That's it? Are these all you have?"

In Japan, the women's magazine publishing business is brisk compared to America. One of the reasons is, I think, Japanese women buy many more magazines than American women. Bookstores here allow you to read magazines and books before, or even without purchasing them. To my surprise, you can even sit and read. It is hard to find such a paradise for bookworms like me in Japan. One time in a bookstore in Japan, I was taking a very short note from a book. A quick-eyed clerk saw and warned me, "Miss, this is not a library. Please don't take notes."

Another reason for the more active market of Japanese women's magazines is that Japanese women care about their appearance very much. They usually dress nicely and don't go out without make-up on. They crave information which is supposed to make them prettier and feel better about themselves. My acquaintance, who has 20 years of financial expertise, said that however the economy slows down, industries that target women's needs such as cosmetics, bath lines, accessories and clothes would most likely do well and wouldn't be as badly affected as other industries.

There seems to be two main components that make magazines successful: substantial information about material goods (beauty tools, make-up, hair care products, etc.) and non-material concepts (health, spirituality, divination, love, lifestyle, etc.). Let's check out one of the best selling weekly magazines for decades, "an.an." While it has regular columns about fads and trends in beauty, it also features unique themes. For example, "Special Secret Recipe by Experts," "Control Your Visual Age," "Mission to Upgrade Your Room," "Life-Changing Skills," and even "The Mysteries of S&M" (!!!)

"an.an" targets women in their 20's. Magazines for women in their 30's and up break into a variety of targets, depending on the lifestyle (single/married, with/without kids, working-class/upper-class, etc.) The percentage of single women in Japan has been increasing because more people choose to stay single, while also the divorce rate has been rising. In my research, there isn't a magazine like "an.an" for single, mature women. There will be a market for women who graduate from "an.an" and are looking for a magazine which can be a partner during their next stage of life.