The major English book distributor in Japan is no more. Yohan declared bankruptcy at the end of July with about 6.5 billion yen in debts. Here's how the distributor explained its demise in a letter to creditors (yep, we're one of those, unfortunately):

To provide a brief background of the circumstances leading to our filing, from around 2006, bookstore sales of books and magazines began to decline because of diminishing individual consumption resulting in increased rates of return. This created a situation whereby we needed to procure funds from financial institutions to cover our purchasing costs. In addition, we made aggressive investments in the acquisition and/or support of a local publisher, overseas subsidiaries in book publishing and book retailing, Aoyama Book Center store openings, overhauling of our logistics center, etc., which led to our carrying a large amount of interest-bearing debt for a company our size. As a result, our interest costs increased, further exacerbating our cash situation. We took steps to reconstruct our business by implementing such restructuring measures as the renewal of our management following the resignation of the former management, selling off stocks of our overseas subsidiaries, and the relocation of our logistics center and scaling down of our head office to reduce costs, but this did not lead to improvements in our cash situation as anticipated, due in part to sales falling below our initial projections. Regrettably, these circumstances ultimately led to our decision to file for bankruptcy as we no longer were able to make payments to our creditors according to our agreements.

I never was a big fan of Yohan — it seemed to care little for the smaller presses and was always full of excuses. So seeing it go doesn't bring tears to this guy's eyes. But this sort of thing does affect publishers, as we wait for months to find out if we're ever going to be paid, and even then, probably receive pennies on the dollar if anything at all. :Let's hope whatever replaces Yohan isn't as monolithic or stodgy and offers more options for small presses in Japan.