Nikkei Group

Overview

The Nikkei group of Japan is a press, data services and broadcast conglomerate. Like competitors such as Yomiuri and Asahi most revenue comes from activity within Japan.

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The group

The Nikkei Group centres around the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's major business and financial newspaper. The Nikkei Weekly is Japan's only national English-language business newspaper. The Nikkei Business Daily (formerly the Nikkei Industrial Daily), Nikkei Financial Daily and Nikkei Marketing Journal provide more specialised new coverage. The most widely recognized of the Group's products is the Nikkei stock average (Nikkei Index). The group publishes a range of magazines, offers online data services and has moved into consulting and venture capital.

It is affiliated with the TV Tokyo network. In 1999 it launched Nikkei CNBC, which brings together Nikkei's television news service, Nikkei Satellite News and CNBC Japan. Nikkei has 51% of the partnership; 49% is held by CNBC Japan (CNBC Asia's Japanese affiliate).

The flagship

The Japan Media Review indicates that the Nihon Keizai Shimbun is the country’s leading Japanese business newspaper with a circulation of 3 million morning edition copies and 1.7 million evening edition copies. It traces its origins to the Chugai Bukka Shinpo business weekly, launched in 1876 and relaunched as the Shimbun in 1946.

Over 93% of the Nikkei morning edition and 98% of its evening edition are purchased via subscription. Supposedly over 63% of readers work in corporations; around 73% are businessmen and women (including self-employed and entrepreneurs) with an even gender split.

Associated publications include The Nikkei Business Daily, Nikkei Marketing Journal, Nikkei Financial Daily and Nikkei Weekly. The Business Daily and Financial Daily are published five days a week. The Marketing Journal is published every Monday, Wednesday and Friday; the Weekly is an English-language abstract of news that is published in the Nikkei papers. The group's English-language Japan Economic Journal (aka the Nikkei Weekly) was founded in 1963.

The fee-based online Nikkei Net features what is promoted as Japan's largest online database (Nikkei Telecom 21) and NEEDS (Nikkei Economic Electronic Databank System, with economic indexes since 1970). The Shimbun's nascent bond rating unit was spun off to form the Japan Bond Rating Institute, which merged with Nippon Investor Service in 2003 as Research & Information Inc - a Japanese counterpart of Standard & Poor's and Moody's.

Studies

There is no substantial English-language study of the group.

For the group's early history see Gregory Kasza's The State and The Mass Media in Japan 1918-1945 (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1988). A perspective is provided by Anne Cooper-Chen's Mass Communication in Japan (Ames: Iowa State Press 1997) and Laurie Freeman's Closing the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan’s Mass Media (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2000).