Yomiuri Shimbun

Yomiuri Shimbun headquarters in Tokyo

Yomiuri Shimbun Osaka Office

Yomiuri Shimbun Fukuoka Office

The Yomiuri Shimbun (読売新聞, Yomiuri Shinbun^?) is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five national newspapers in Japan; the other four are the Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and the Sankei Shimbun. The headquarters is located in Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo.^[1]

Founded in 1874, the Yomiuri Shimbun is credited with having the largest newspaper circulation in the world ^[2][3] having a combined morning and evening circulation of 14,323,781 through January 2002. The paper is printed twice a day and in several different local editions.

Yomiuri Shimbun established the Yomiuri Prize in 1948 whose winners include Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami.

Political stance

The Yomiuri Shimbun is conservative and sometimes considered a centre-right newspaper.^[4]

For example, the International Herald Tribune reported that "The nation's largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, applauded the revisions"^[5] in reference to the whitewashing of the educational textbooks on comfort women and the Nanking Massacre in China. And The Wall Street Journal reported that "The Yomiuri Shinbun, the country's largest national daily, for example, blasted the Chinese government in an editorial"^[6] because of the Chinese Foreign Ministry official's criticism of the whitewashing of the textbooks.

Other publications and ventures

Yomiuri also publishes The Daily Yomiuri, Japan's largest English-language newspaper. As a supplement to the daily edition, a weekly newsmagazine – The Yomiuri Weekly – is circulated. It publishes the daily Hochi Shimbun, a sport-specific daily newspaper, as well as weekly and monthly magazines and books.

Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings owns the Chuokoron-Shinsha publishing company, which it acquired in 1999, and the Nippon Television network.

It is a member of the Asia News Network.

The Yomiuri Shimbun is known as the de facto financial patron of the baseball team Yomiuri Giants and the fooball club Tokyo Verdy 1969. They also sponsor the Japan Fantasy Novel Award annually.

History

The Yomiuri was launched in 1876 by the Nisshusha newspaper company as a small daily newspaper. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s the paper came to be known as a literary arts publication with its regular inclusion of work by writers such as Ozaki Koyo.

In 1924, Shoriki Matsutaro took over management of the company. His innovations included sensational news coverage, a full-page radio program guide, and the establishment of Japan's first professional baseball team (now known as the Yomiuri Giants).

The emphasis of the paper shifted to broad news coverage aimed at readers in the Tokyo area. By 1941 it had the largest circulation of any daily newspaper in the Tokyo area. In 1942, under wartime conditions, it merged with the Hochi Shimbun and became known as the Yomiuri-Hochi.

In February 2009, tie-up with The Wall Street Journal for edit, printing and distribution, then from March the major news of headline of WSJ Asian edition is summarized on evening edition in Japanese.

Digital resources

In November 1999, The Yomiuri Shimbun released a CD-ROM titled "The Yomiuri Shimbun in the Meiji Era," which provided searchable archives of news articles and images from the period that have been digitalized from microfilm. This was the first time a newspaper made it possible to search digitalized images of newspaper pictures and articles as they appeared in print.

Subsequent CD-ROMs, "The Taisho Era", "The prewar Showa Era I", and "The prewar Showa era II" were completed eight years after the project was first conceived. "Postwar Recovery", the first part of a postwar Showa Era series that includes newspaper stories and images until 1960, is on the way.

The system of indexing each newspaper article and image makes the archives easier to search, and the CD-ROMs have been well received by users as a result. This digital resource is available in most major academic libraries in the United States.

Locations

• Tokyo Head Office

1-7-1, Otemachi, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan

• Osaka Head Office

5-9, Nozakicho, Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan

• West Japan Head Office

1-16-5, Akasaka, Chūō-ku, Fukuoka, Japan

Yomiuri Group

• Yomiuri Giants
• Nippon Television Network Corporation
• Yomiuri Telecasting Corporation
• Chuokoron-Shinsha, Inc.
• Yomiuri Land, an amusement park
• Yomiuri Advertising Agency (also known as "Yomiko")

See also

• Japanese media

References

External links

• Yomiuri Shimbun Online (Japanese)
• Daily Yomiuri Online (English)
• Guinness World Record: Highest Daily Newspaper Circulation
• Yomiuri Advertising Agency (Japanese)