One long-standing trend in Japan has been the "shift away from print" -- an aversion to serious reading. For example, in the past four years, book sales have continued to decline. Compared with other countries, the books being read woefully lags in quality and quantity.
Most college students do not read newspapers regularly, and more than half do not read serious books except textbooks. Businesspeople who have the habit of reading tomes other than those related to their professions probably belong in the minority.
Riding a Tokaido Shinkansen train, for example, one can see older passengers reading weeklies and younger ones manga. About half of those weeklies include full-page pictures of girls in the nude. Sports newspapers -- another category of lowbrow reading enjoyment -- devote several pages each to pornographic articles.