A new study finds that Japanese kids raised in a Japanese household are less than half as likely to be reading their own books.
The findings come as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to boost the country’s literary exports by encouraging people to start their own fiction and drama.
The study was carried out in 2015 and looked at the first three years of their lives.
In the study, about 5,000 Japanese-born adults were asked about their reading habits and the impact it had on their life, and then followed up for two years.
In all, the researchers found that children raised in households with a parent with a native English speaking mother had a 50 per cent lower reading rate than their Japanese-speaking counterparts.
The difference was not statistically significant.
Children raised in an English-speaking home were also about a 30 per cent less likely than children raised with a mother with a foreign language background to read their own novels.
The authors of the study noted that while it may not seem like much of a difference, the study highlights how the Japanese-American community is already struggling with language barriers.
The authors suggest the study can be used to encourage other people in the Japanese community to seek out English-language books, and to help those in the community who might not be able to read with their parents, to start.
“This study is an important first step in encouraging Japanese children to read,” said Dr. Hiroshi Hasegawa, who conducted the research.
“It shows that Japanese parents have more responsibility for their childrens reading than they think.
They have to pay attention to the way their children read.
If they read well, their children are less interested in reading.”
The study is the first to look at the impact of a mother’s language on the reading habits of her children.
The results also show that language does play a role.
The Japanese-language-language gap in reading is about 10 per cent.
“We don’t know what the long-term effects are of this, but we think that language plays a role,” said Hasebawa.
The researchers also found that people with a background in English had a higher reading rate when they were around the age of two, while English-speakers were more likely to have a reading rate around three.
However, there was no difference in reading rates when children were between ages two and four.
The Japanese-origin study also looked at how different levels of English language proficiency affected the reading ability of children.
Japanese children who had lower levels of proficiency were also less likely then those with higher levels of literacy.
