ABSTRACT
Japan arguably boasts the leading newspaper (shinbun) industry in the world. In 2004, newspaper readership was 644 newspapers per 1,000 adults (in the US and UK, by contrast, the figures were 263 and 332 respectively).1 Japan’s five national broadsheets accounted for 56.5 per cent of all newspaper sales in 2005 and sales of the morning editions were: Yomiuri shinbun (10.08 million), Asahi shinbun (8.26 million), Mainichi shinbun (3.96 million), Nikon Keizai shinbun (hereafter Nikkei, 3.03 million) and Sankei shinbun (2.16 million). With subscriptions the norm and a 93.9 per cent daily delivery rate (in 2004), waking up to a newspaper is a way of life in Japan. In 2001, 74.5 per cent of people said they read a newspaper every day; and in research conducted in 1997, men said they spent an average of 44.7 minutes and women an average of 33.5 minutes a day reading the paper. Newspaper sales, subscriptions and readership have shown a slight downward trend in recent years, mainly because of competition from news online, but nevertheless, all this data points to one conclusion: newspapers have an important role in daily life in Japan.
