Cellphone-Obsessed Japan Dials ‘N’ for Novel

Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it: Tens of thousands of Japanese cellphone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens.

In this technology-enamored nation, the mobile phone has become so widespread as an entertainment and communications device that reading e-mail, news headlines and weather forecasts -- rather advanced mobile features by global standards -- is routine.

Now, Japan’s cellphone users are turning pages.

Several mobile websites offer hundreds of novels -- classics, best sellers and some works written especially for the medium.

It takes some getting used to. Only a few lines pop up at a time because the phone screen is about half the size of a business card.

But improvements in the quality of liquid-crystal displays and features such as automatic page-flipping, or scrolling, make the endeavor far more enjoyable than you’d imagine.

In the latest versions, cellphone novels are downloaded in short installments and run on handsets as Java-based applications. You’re free to browse as though you’re in a bookstore, whether you’re at home, in your office or on a commuter train. A whole library can be tucked away in your cellphone.

“You can read whenever you have a spare moment, and you don’t even need to use both hands,” said Taro Matsumura, 24, a graduate student who sometimes reads essays and serial novels on his phone.

Such times could be just around the corner in the United States, where cellphones are increasingly used for relaying data, including video, digital photos and music.

U.S. publisher Random House recently bought a stake in VOCEL, a San Diego-based company that provides such mobile-phone products as Scholastic Aptitude Test preparation programs. Random House also said it reached licensing arrangements with VOCEL to provide cellphone access to the publisher’s Living Language foreign language study programs and Prima Games video game strategy guides.

Cellphone books are also gradually gaining ground in China and South Korea. In Japan, though, some people are really getting hooked, finding the phone an intimate tool for reading.

It’s especially effective for intensifying the thrills of a horror story, said Satoko Kajita, who oversees content development at Bandai Networks Co.

The Tokyo-based wireless service provider offers 150 books on its site, called “Bunko Yomihodai,” which means “All You Can Read Paperbacks.” It began the service in 2003 and saw interest grow last year. There are now about 50,000 subscribers.

“It’s hard to understand unless you try it out,” Kajita said, adding that the handset’s backlight allows people to read with the lights off -- a convenience that delights parents who like to read near sleeping infants.

Users can search by author, title and genre. Readers can write reviews, send fan mail to authors and request what they want to read, all from their phones.

A recent marketing study by Bandai found that more than half the readers are female, and many are reading cellphone books in their homes.

People supposedly are using cellphone books to catch up on classics that they never finished, and perusing sex manuals and other books they’re too embarrassed to be caught reading or buying. More common is keeping an electronic dictionary in the phone.

Cellphone novels remain a niche market compared with ring tones, music downloads and video games, said Yoshiteru Yamaguchi, executive director at Japan’s top mobile carrier, NTT DoCoMo. But no longer is reading books on a phone considered unbelievable, he said.

In Japan, cellphone books have already won respect as an emerging culture.

A writer who goes by the single name Yoshi wrote “Deep Love,” a series of stories about a teenage prostitute in Tokyo. He began by posting them on an obscure cellphone site that he started, making reader payment voluntary.

“Deep Love,” which uses erotic language and violence to create a page-turner despite a preposterous plot, became a hit, mainly through word of mouth among young adults. It went on to become a movie, TV show and “manga,” or Japanese-style comic book.

It’s even been turned into a real book, with some 2.6 million copies sold.

Like the Internet, cellphone publishing offers an opportunity for unknown writers, and it delivers new kinds of fun because it’s interactive, said Katsuya Yamashita, executive producer at Starts Publishing Corp., which publishes Yoshi’s works.

Another work by Yoshi, a horror mystery, has a cellphone Web link that readers click. One pulls up a video clip of a bleeding face; another shows a letter that tells people to go on living.

Yoshi, a former prep school instructor who sees his readers as “a community,” reads the dozens of e-mail messages that teenage fans send him daily and uses their material for story ideas.

He also knows immediately when readers are getting bored and changes the plot when access tallies start dipping for his stories.

“It’s like playing live music at a club,” he said. “You know right away if the audience isn’t responding, and you can change what you’re doing right then and there.”