More than half of university students in Japan answered that they don't read at all in a 2017 survey, the National Federation of University Co-operative Associations announced on Feb. 26.

A total of 53.1 percent, up 4 points from the previous year, answered "zero" to the question about how much time they allocated to reading each day. It was the first time for the ratio to have topped 50 percent since the question was added to the poll in 2004. The survey was conducted at 30 university co-ops in October and November last year. The groups received 10,021 answers from men and women.

Some 10.2 percent of those surveyed replied that they spent less than 30 minutes reading each day, 17 percent answered under an hour, while 13 percent responded no more than two hours. The average time spent on reading was 23.6 minutes a day.

The number of students who answered that they didn't read at all increased 18.6 points from 34.5 percent five years ago.