02/06/2026

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Japan turns to ‘zines’ amid AI boom o Artists and readers look to self-published magazines for the personal touch and experience of print

KYOTO: Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form – part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of AI. Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the country’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to AFP at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara said “I think (paper) is a medium that engages all five senses”, unlike social media. Obara and his creative partner Akihico Mori are among the latest artists to use a printing press offered by the Kyoto Shimbun newspaper, which is aiming to find alternative uses for its machines as subscriptions fall. As the machine printed their work on newsprint paper, five technicians in uniform quickly flipped through the pages to check the quality. “I think print media is incredibly open. You can hand it to someone, you can read it together,” 40-year-old photographer Obara said, calling mobile phones “very insular”. Mori, a 44-year-old writer, said people can “feel the creator’s passion when they hold the work in their hands”. “I think that’s what makes it so appealing, and AI simply can’t replicate it.” The pair’s work was later showcased at popular international photography festival Kyotographie that ended in May. Yoshihiko Okazaki of Kyoto Shimbun Printing said the company’s services have been used by artists ranging from teenagers to those in their 70s. “Surprisingly, it resonates with younger people... I even hear comments like, ‘it’s interesting precisely because it’s old’.” Japan has seen a rapid decline in print The US hardware titan’s move challenges the likes of Apple, Intel and AMD in the PC domain, although the new devices will likely carry a hefty price tag. It also represents an attempt by Nvidia – which the AI boom has made the world’s most valuable company – to diversify into the consumer market, even as it reaps record profits from selling data centre processors to global tech giants. “Microsoft and Nvidia are going to reinvent the PC,“ Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said in Taipei as he launched the RTX Spark chip ahead of Computex, a major technology show. “If you want to run digital biology, no problem. If you want to do seismic processing, no problem. You want astrophysics, no problem,“ Huang added, calling it “an incredible computer”. It is “as big of a deal as the reinvention of the phone into what we now know as the smartphone”, he said. RTX Spark-powered laptops and desktops, made by the likes of Dell and Lenovo, will be available this autumn, Nvidia said.

media, with book and magazine sales falling to just 40% of their 1996 pinnacle of ¥2.6 trillion yen (RM65 billion). Newspaper circulation peaked in 1997 at 53.76 million, but it dropped to more than half that in 2025, according to the Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association. Many authors and publishers around the world fear the trend will be accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI) and social media – in the UK, a 2025 study showed that half of novelists believe AI is likely to replace their work. However, like in other countries worldwide, do-it-yourself publication including zines – which originated in the 1930s with sci-fi fans in the US – is growing in Japan, especially among younger generations. Public broadcaster NHK reported, citing one private research firm, the self-publishing market is estimated at ¥150 billion in the year ending March 2026, nearly double the figure four years ago. On one weekend in Tokyo, hundreds of visitors flocked to a zine fair showcasing a wide range of handmade magazines in different sizes and formats – some incorporating abstract designs, photography or personal monologues. “AI and social media are driven by algorithms that feed us nothing but what we want to see or what suits us best,” said 22 year-old visitor Harumi Kikuchi. “But the fact that many zine makers are here suggests there are many different worldviews.” Zine creator Watashi Kishino, who hand draws her daily life in black-and-white illustrations, said people can “make a lot of things with AI and digital technology”. “But I believe there’s a charm in having something tangible to hold in your hands like this,” Kishino said, showing her works. Major bookstores are also embracing the Nvidia is best known for its GPUs, specialised chips originally designed to render gaming graphics at high speed, which have more recently become the engine for chatbots and other AI tools. As governments and companies pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure, the company’s value has topped US$5 trillion (RM19.8 trillion), more than the GDP of Japan or India. Yesterday’s announcement instead focuses on a new CPU, or central processing unit, which acts like the brain of a personal computer. “Nvidia is bypassing the traditional PC supply chain to build an end-to-end hardware monopoly,“ said Stephen Wu, a former AI software engineer and founder of the Carthage Capital investment fund. Wu told AFP that the development, long awaited in the industry, represents an “existential threat” to current laptop chip designs, with Intel and AMD “the immediate casualties”. It is also a strategic attempt by Nvidia to get programmers to build new tech products

Staff members inspecting the printing quality of photographer Kazuma Obara’s work titled The Newspaper at the Kyoto Shimbun factory in Kumiyama, Kyoto prefecture. – AFPPIX

trend as young people increasingly drift away from physical books. Sanseido, a 145-year-old bookstore in Tokyo’s book district Jimbocho, began putting zines on their shelves almost a year ago. “We felt that zines could appeal to a different audience than traditional readers,” Masato Sugiura, deputy head of the sales promotion unit, told AFP. “Everyone is looking for something that really speaks to them. Readers are perhaps drawn more to zines, which are niche and cover a broader range of topics,” he added. Kishino remains hopeful that physical books and magazines will endure despite the digital age. “There’s warmth that only paper can offer,” she said. “There’s definitely people who are looking for that.” But with a memory chip shortage pushing up the cost of consumer electronics, “the biggest question... may not be how powerful the next wave of PC hardware is, but whether buyers can still afford it,“ PC World magazine senior editor Alaina Yee wrote last week. Huang showcased Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin chip platform on stage yesterday, saying that a rush to so-called agentic AI is driving up the already overwhelming demand for computing power. He also called concerns that AI will decimate jobs worldwide “complete nonsense”. “The number of software engineers is actually increasing,“ he said. “Useful AI has arrived. AI is now a profit generator. AI is now a GDP generator.” Huang did not however address the thorny issue of his months-long campaign to sell chips in China that can train and run AI systems. Washington in December eased national security export restrictions to China of a cutting-edge Nvidia model, the H200 chip. But there have been no signs of orders from Chinese tech companies as Beijing ramps up domestic chip development, in a bid to challenge US dominance in the sector.

Rising stablecoin use could cement dollar dominance, says ECB FRANKFURT: The increased use of stablecoins could reinforce the dollar’s global dominance, undermine some nations’ ability to set monetary policy and even diminish the role of the euro, European Central Bank (ECB) board member Isabel Schnabel said yesterday. The use of stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to certain assets and designed to maintain a stable value, is still relatively low but has increased quickly and modelling by analysts has suggested a further rapid spread. The vast majority of stablecoins are pegged to the US dollar and a rapid growth in issuance could slow or even reverse a two-decades-long decline in the global role of the dollar, some economists say. “The dollar’s dominance would be reinforced, not necessarily owing to stronger economic fundamentals but due to network effects, scale and first-mover advantages,“ Schnabel told a Bank of Korea conference in Seoul, with reference to the rise in use. The share of the dollar in foreign exchange reserves fell to below 57% last year, down from 70% at the turn of the century, as smaller currencies have taken its market share, IMF data shows. While a boost to the dollar from increased use of stablecoins could have the biggest impact on countries whose monetary policy lacks credibility, the implications, Schnabel said, could potentially affect the euro, too. It could also be a vicious circle, as people may be more drawn to dollar-based stablecoins in countries lacking policy credibility, which could further weaken the central bank’s ability to transmit policy change to the real economy. “Even for regions with strong monetary credibility, the persistent dominance of US dollar stablecoins could, over time, have undesirable consequences if it strengthens US dollar invoicing and global liquidity holdings,“ Schnabel said. “From a European perspective, this could eventually limit the euro’s role in emerging forms of tokenised finance and in the international monetary system more generally.” – Reuters

Nvidia unveils Windows laptop chip in consumer PC push TAIPEI: Nvidia unveiled a powerful laptop chip for Windows machines yesterday, staking its claim in the market for next generation consumer PCs integrated with artificial intelligence (AI). It is not the first time Nvidia chips have powered Windows devices – a range of tablets did so in the early 2010s. But the new PCs are positioned as tools that can easily run AI services such as agents, which can carry out tasks for users. on their hardware, which will boost demand for data centre GPUs, he said.