InsideJapan News Network

A trend for reading novels on mobile phones is growing in Japan, it has been noted.

Writing for the Independent, US author Barry Yourgrau said that in Japan, text messaging is seen as out of date and micro blogging site Twitter - currently all the rage in the US and the UK - is not very popular.

Increasingly popular in Japan however, is reading novels on phones, a craze which has "spawned a wildly successful, populist literary genre", Mr Yourgrau noted.

Keitai shosetsu - or mobile phone fiction - has been called the first narrative mode of the text message age, he said.

The author is the first American writer to create work for Japanese phones.

It is commented that most of those who publish their work to be read in such a way are teenage girls and young women, who wax lyrical about romance under fake names.

As a nation, the Japanese are known for often being one step ahead of the rest of the world in terms of technology and gadgetry.

Written by Kimberley Homer.