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Japan's Media

As in other countries, the influence of the media in Japan is immense. The existence of daily newspapers, television and magazines with nationwide coverage cannot be ignored in corporate publicity and marketing activities. Television and daily newspapers have the greatest social influence. It is not that television and daily newspapers convey new information faster than anywhere else, with the exception of certain political and macroeconomic news. Industry news, the onset of matters of a social nature and local news, for example, are presented first by industry journals, weekly magazines and local television stations before being reported on a national scale. In other words, interest in information grows from community or industry level to national level in stages. Only crime, sport and other matters of major public interest become instant national news. It is common for the major television stations and dailies to take information from industry journals and local newspapers. Consequently, if a company, particularly a company that is not very well known in Japan, wants to disseminate information, it first needs regular exposure in industry journals, specialised magazines and other media. The various media are described below

Newspapers

A major feature of Japanese newspapers is their huge circulation. The five big national dailies, the Yomiuri, Asahi, Mainichi, Sankei and Nikkei, occupy top positions in world newspaper circulation rankings. Japan also has four block newspapers and approximately 60 local papers as well as business and financial newspapers, evening papers and sports newspapers.
The national newspapers maintain their overwhelming circulation through a home-delivery system built up over the years. They are highly influential, especially in the cities. Read by people of all ages, the information they provide covers a wide range of fields from politics and economics to society, culture and sports. The financial section consequently occupies a mere four pages, however, limiting the range of topics covered to macroeconomics and major Japanese business trends and leaving virtually no space for articles about foreign companies inside and outside Japan.

 
 
Yomiuri Shimbun

Circulation

Morning edition 10,063,762
Evening edition 3,964,787
Asahi Shimbun

Circulation

Morning edition 8,182,750
Evening edition 3,751,185
Mainichi Shimbun

Circulation

Morning edition 3,932,111
Evening edition 1,613,779
Sankei Shimbun

Circulation

Morning edition 2,159,742
Evening edition 636,262
Nihon Keizai Shimbun

Circulation

Morning edition 3,052,823
Evening edition 1,611,700

Television

Japanís one state channel and five commercial broadcasting networks exert a major influence. Unlike Europe or America where viewers can watch a variety of business programmes, Japan features only one such programme and even that focuses almost solely on Japanese business, with the result that foreign companies receive very little exposure.

 

Pres Clubs

Based in pressrooms established in the prime ministerís office, government ministries, local governments, police departments, industry groups and other organisations, Japanís press clubs are gatherings of reporters from specific news media. Membership of such clubs is often refused to smaller media, freelance journalists and foreign news organisations. Distributing a press release to a press club means the information is sent to the relevant correspondents in the major media, but as some clubs exclude any but the top media, greater exposure requires that the release be distributed separately to each media.