Japanese publisher, Kodansha, will soon have a new president — one who’s an advocate of e-books, report Asashi — in the form of Yoshinobu Noma, son of the company’s current president, Sawako Noma.
Yoshinobu Noma currently serves as the company’s executive vice-president as well as the representative director of the 43-member Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan. His mother, Sawako, assumed the post of Kodansha’s president in 1987, which means this will be the first time for Kodansha to see a change in presidency in 24 years.
"Electronic books have the potential to increase the ways in which literary works are read,” Noma said at a press conference in May 2010, regarding e-books. “This would stimulate demand for paper books and revitalize the publishing market, including bookstores.”
As part of the Electronic Book Publishers Association of Japan, Noma, along with 30 other publishers in Japan, has been in discussions with the Japanese government regarding the ramifications of digitization. Noma will succeed his mother come this April, and will be Kodansha’s seventh president to date.
Image courtesy of Impress Watch.
