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 First issue on 25 January 1879 | |
| Type | Daily newspaper Company type:Private |
|---|---|
| Format | Blanket (54.6 cm x 40.65 cm) |
| Owner(s) | Repurchased shares (25%) Murayama family (21.02%; 10% through the KOSETSU Museum of Art) Ueno family (total 14.22% by Shōichi Ueno's death in 2016) TV Asahi (11.88%) Toppan (7.31%) Asahi Broadcasting Group Holdcorp (2.31%) |
| Founder(s) | Murayama Ryōhei [ja] Ueno Riichi |
| Founded | January 25, 1879; 146 years ago (1879-01-25) |
| Political alignment | |
| Headquarters | Nakanoshima,Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan |
| Country | Japan |
| Circulation | |
| Website | www www |
The Asahi Shimbun (朝日新聞,IPA:[asaçiɕiꜜmbɯɴ],lit. 'morning sun newspaper') is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers inJapan andAsia, and is considered anewspaper of record for Japan.
TheAsahi Shimbun is one of the five largestnewspapers in Japan along with theYomiuri Shimbun, theMainichi Shimbun, theNihon Keizai Shimbun andChunichi Shimbun.[14] The newspaper's circulation, which was 4.57 million for its morning edition and 1.33 million for its evening edition as of July 2021,[15] was second behind that of theYomiuri Shimbun. By print circulation, it is the secondlargest newspaper in the world behind theYomiuri, though its digital size trails that of many global newspapers includingThe New York Times.[16]
Its publisher, The Asahi Shimbun Company,[17] is amedia conglomerate with its registered headquarters inOsaka. It is aprivately heldfamily business with ownership and control remaining with the founding Murayama and Ueno families. According to the Reuters Institute Digital Report 2018, public trust in theAsahi Shimbun is the lowest among Japan's major dailies, though confidence is declining in all the major newspapers.[18]
One of Japan's oldest and largest national daily newspapers, theAsahi Shimbun began publication inOsaka on 25 January 1879 as a small-print, four-page illustrated paper that sold for one sen (a hundredth of a yen) a copy, and had a circulation of approximately 3,000 copies. The three founding officers of a staff of twenty were Kimura Noboru (company president),Murayama Ryōhei [ja] (owner), and Tsuda Tei (managing editor). The company's first premises were at Minami-dōri, Edobori in Osaka. On 13 September of the same year,Asahi printed its first editorial.
In 1881, theAsahi adopted an all-news format, and enlistedUeno Riichi as co-owner. From 1882,Asahi began to receive financial support from the Government andMitsui, and hardened the management base. Then, under the leadership of Ueno, whose brother was one of the Mitsui managers, and Murayama, theAsahi began its steady ascent to national prominence. On 10 July 1888, the first issue of theTokyo Asahi Shimbun was published from theTokyo office at Motosukiyachō, Kyōbashi. The first issue was numbered No. 1,076 as it was a continuation of three small papers:Jiyū no Tomoshibi,Tomoshibi Shimbun andMesamashi Shimbun.[19]
On 1 April 1907, the renowned writerNatsume Sōseki, then 41, resigned his teaching positions at Tokyo Imperial University, nowTokyo University, to join theTokyo Asahi Shimbun. This was soon after the publication of his novelsWagahai wa Neko de Aru (I Am a Cat) andBotchan, which made him the center of literary attention.[19]
On 1 October 1908,Osaka Asahi Shimbun andTokyo Asahi Shimbun were merged into a single unified corporation,Asahi Shimbun Gōshi Kaisha, with a capitalization of approximately 600,000 yen.[20]
In 1918, because of its critical stance towardsTerauchi Masatake's cabinet during theRice Riots, government authorities suppressed an article in theOsaka Asahi, leading to a softening of its liberal views, and the resignation of many of its staff reporters in protest.[21][22]
Indeed, the newspaper's liberal position led to its vandalization during theFebruary 26 Incident of 1936, as well as repeated attacks fromultranationalists throughout this period (and for that matter, throughout its history).
From the latter half of the 1930s,Asahi ardently supported Prime MinisterFumimaro Konoe's wartime government (calledKonoe Shin Taisei, or Konoe's New Political Order) and criticized capitalism harshly underTaketora Ogata, the Editor in Chief ofAsahi Shimbun. Influential editorial writers ofAsahi such as Shintarō Ryū, Hiroo Sassa, andHotsumi Ozaki (an informant for the famous spyRichard Sorge) were the center members of theShōwa Kenkyūkai, which was a politicalthink tank for Konoe.
Ogata was one of the leading members of theGenyōsha which had been formed in 1881 byTōyama Mitsuru. TheGenyōsha was anultranationalist group of organized crime figures and those with far right-wing political beliefs.Kōki Hirota, who was later hanged as a Class A war criminal, was also a leading member of theGenyōsha and one of Ogata's best friends. Hirota was the chairman of Tōyama's funeral committee, and Ogata was the vice-chairman.
Ryū, who had been a Marxist economist of the Ōhara Institute for Social Research[23] before he enteredAsahi, advocated centrallyplanned economies in hisNihon Keizai no Saihensei (Reorganization of Japanese Economies. 1939). And Sassa, a son of ultranationalistic politician Sassa Tomofusa, joined hands with far-right generals (they were calledKōdōha orImperial Way Faction) and terrorists who had assassinatedJunnosuke Inoue (ex–Minister of Finance), BaronDan Takuma (chairman of the board of directors of theMitsuizaibatsu) and Prime MinisterInukai Tsuyoshi to support Konoe. In 1944, they attempted assassination of Prime MinisterHideki Tōjō (one of the leaders ofTōseiha or Control Group which conflicted withKōdōha in theJapanese Army).
On 9 April 1937, theKamikaze, aMitsubishi aircraft sponsored by the Asahi Shimbun company and flown by Masaaki Iinuma, arrived inLondon, to the astonishment of theWestern world. It was the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe.
On 1 September 1940, theOsaka Asahi Shimbun and theTokyo Asahi Shimbun unified their names into theAsahi Shimbun.
On 1 January 1943, the publication of theAsahi Shimbun was stopped by the government after the newspaper published a critical essay contributed bySeigō Nakano, who was also one of the leading members of theGenyōsha and Ogata's best friend.
On 27 December 1943,Nagataka Murayama [ja], a son-in-law of Murayama Ryōhei and the President ofAsahi, removed Ogata from the Editor in Chief and relegated him to the Vice President to hold absolute power inAsahi.
On 22 July 1944, Ogata, Vice President ofAsahi, became aMinister without Portfolio and the President of Cabinet Intelligence Agency inKuniaki Koiso's cabinet.
On 7 April 1945,Hiroshi Shimomura, former Vice President ofAsahi, became the Minister without Portfolio and the President of Cabinet Intelligence Agency inKantarō Suzuki's cabinet.
On 17 August 1945, Ogata became the Minister without Portfolio and theChief Cabinet Secretary and the President of Cabinet Intelligence Agency inPrince Higashikuni's cabinet.
On 5 November 1945, as a way of assuming responsibility for compromising the newspaper's principles during the war, theAsahi Shimbun's president and senior executives resigned en masse.
On 21 November 1946, the newspaper adopted the modernkana usage system (shin kanazukai).
On 30 November 1949, theAsahi Shimbun started to publish the serialized cartoon stripSazae-san by Machiko Hasegawa. This was a landmark cartoon in Japan's postwar era.
Between 1954 and 1971,Asahi Shimbun published a glossy, large-format annual in English entitledThis is Japan.
Between April and May 1989, the paper reported that a coral reef nearOkinawa was defaced by "すさんだ心根の日本人" (a man with a Japanese dissolute mind). It later turned to be a report in which the reporter himself defaced the coral reef. This incident was calledja:朝日新聞珊瑚記事捏造事件 (theAsahi Shimbun coral article hoax incident).[24][citation needed], and the president resigned to take responsibility for it.[25]
On 26 June 2007, Yoichi Funabashi was named the third editor-in-chief ofAsahi Shimbun.
Shōichi Ueno, the newspaper's co-owner since 1997, died on 29 February 2016.[26]
While Shin-ichi Hakojima was CEO, a partnership with theInternational Herald Tribune led to the publication of an English-language newspaper, theInternational Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun. It continued from April 2001 until February 2011.[27] It replacedAsahi's previous English-language daily, theAsahi Evening News. In 2010, this partnership was dissolved due to unprofitability and theAsahi Shimbun now operates theAsia & Japan Watch online portal for English readers.[27] TheTribune (now known asThe International New York Times) cooperates withAsahi onAera English, a glossy magazine for English learners.[28]
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TheAsahi Shimbun is considered left-leaning[29][30][31] and has been called "the intellectual flagship of Japan's political left,"[32] with a long tradition of reporting on big political scandals more often than its conservative counterparts.[33] The paper is considered anewspaper of record in Japan.[34][35][36]
TheAsahi Shimbun is critical of right-wingJapanese nationalism and showsprogressive tendencies incultural anddiplomatic issues, but has aneoliberal tendency economically. The latter contrasts withMainichi Shimbun's relativelyKeynesian economic viewpoint.[37] However, in general evaluation, theAsahi Shimbun seems to have a tone representing Japanesesocial-liberals (left-liberals).[3][4]
TheAsahi has called for upholding of Japan's postwarConstitution and particularlyArticle 9, which bars the use of war to resolve disputes. The newspaper has also opposed changes in interpretation of the anti-war provision, including one made in 2014 that allowed theJapan Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of an ally under attack—the so-called right of collective self-defense.[38]
While theAsahi retracted articles based on the discredited testimony ofSeiji Yoshida, its editorial position still recognizes the existence of thecomfort women as Korean and other women from Japan's conquered territories duringWorld War II who were coerced intoprostitution to serve the Japanese military.[39]
In August 2014, the newspaper retracted the discredited testimonies ofSeiji Yoshida about the forcible recruitment ofcomfort women that were cited in several articles published by theAsahi and other major Japanese newspapers in the 1980s and 1990s. The paper drew ire from conservative media who, along with Abe's government, criticized it for damaging Japan's reputation abroad,[40][41] some leveraging on this episode to imply that sexual slavery itself was a fabrication. TheAsahi newspaper reaffirmed in its retracting article that "the fact that women were coerced into being sexual partners for Japanese soldiers cannot be erased" but also confirmed "No official documents were found that directly showed forcible taking away by the military on the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, where the people living there were made 'subjects' of the Japanese Empire under Japanese colonial rule. Prostitution agents were prevalent due to the poverty and patriarchal family system. For that reason, even if the military was not directly involved, it is said it was possible to gather many women through such methods as work-related scams and human trafficking."[42][43]
Following the March 2011Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, theAsahi and other newspapers faced growing public criticism for adhering too closely to the government narrative during their reporting of the disaster.[44][45] In response, theAsahi strengthened its investigative reporting unit, called theTokubetsu Hodobu, or Special Reports Section, to take a more independent approach to its coverage. The section won many awards, including theJapan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association Award in 2012 and again in 2013.[46]
In May 2014, the section published what it hoped would be its biggest scoop yet: a copy of the firsthand account of the disaster given byMasao Yoshida, who was the manager of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant when the triple meltdown occurred; the testimony, recorded by government investigators, had been kept hidden from public view. In the testimony, Yoshida said that 90% of the plant's employees had left the plant at the height of the crisis despite him having given instructions for them to remain. He also testified that he believed his instructions had simply not reached the employees in the chaos of the disaster. However, controversy erupted over theAsahi story, and particularly the headline, which stated: “Workers Evacuated, Violating Plant Manager Orders."[47] The newspaper came under intense criticism for slandering the workers by implying that they had fled the plant due to cowardice, when many in Japan had come to see Yoshida and plant workers as heroes who had prevented a worse disaster at the plant.[48]
Japanese journalist Ryusho Kadota, who have previously interviewed Yoshida and plant workers, was one of the first to criticize theAsahi for mischaracterizing the evacuation.[49] TheAsahi at first defended its story, demanding that Kadota's publisher apologize and issue a correction.[50] However, in August, theYomiuri Shimbun,Sankei Shimbun,Kyodo News andNHK all acquired the same testimony, apparently from the government, and used it not to shed light on the disaster, but to attack theAsahi.[51][52] In mid-September, facing intense criticism from other media and the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for its Fukushima coverage and also its retractions of the comfort women stories, theAsahi suddenly announced that the Yoshida story had been mistaken and retracted it. The president of theAsahi, Tadakazu Kimura, a supporter of the investigative section, resigned to take responsibility.[53][54][55]
The reporters and editors responsible for the story were punished, and the Special Reports Section reduced in size, with many of its members reassigned elsewhere in the paper. Two of the top reporters later quit to found anon-profit journalism organization that is one of the first in Japan dedicated to investigative journalism, the Waseda Chronicle, later renamed toTokyo Investigative Newsroom Tansa. The Asahi's investigative section was told to avoid coverage of the Fukushima disaster, and has largely faded from view.[47][56]
In the evening edition of April 20, 1989, an article described how the world's largest Azamicoral in a sea area designated as a natural environment conservation area inOkinawa was damaged, with the initial "KY" scratched on the coral. Along with a color photograph of the scratched coral, the article lamented the decline in Japanese morals. Later, investigations by local divers who had doubts about the article proved that theAsahi photographer himself made the scratches to forge a newspaper article. Taking responsibility, the president (at that time) Toichiro Hitotsuyanagi was forced to resign.[57] This was also known as the KY case.
On 27 September 1950, a solo interview with aJapanese Communist Party executive in hiding, Ritsu Ito, was posted. Later it was revealed that this was forged by theAsahi reporter in charge.
The Asahi Shimbun Asia Network (AAN) is a think tank that aims to promote information exchange in Asia and provide opportunities for scholars, researchers and journalists to share their ideas on pressing themes in Asia. It was established in 1999.[58] Their work includes annual international symposia and the publication of research reports.[59] In 2003, Gong Ro Myung was chosen as the new president of AAN.[58]
Symposia have included:
Reports include such titles as:
Established in 1929, the Asahi Prize is a prize awarded by the newspaper, since 1992 by the Asahi Shimbun Foundation, for achievements in scholarship or the arts that has made a lasting contribution to Japanese culture or society.[61][62]
Reproductions of past issues of theAsahi Shimbun are available in three major forms; asCD-ROMs, asmicrofilm, and asshukusatsuban (縮刷版, literally, "reduced-sized print editions").Shukusatsuban is a technology popularized byAsahi Shimbun in the 1930s as a way to compress and archive newspapers by reducing the size of the print to fit multiple pages of a daily newspaper onto one page.Shukusatsuban are geared towards libraries and archives, and are usually organized and released by month. These resources are available at many leading research universities throughout the world (usually universities with reputableJapanese studies programs).
TheAsahi Shimbun has a CD-ROM database consisting of an index of headlines and sub-headlines from the years 1945–1999. A much more expensive full-text searchable database is available only at the Harvard-Yenching Library atHarvard University, which notably includes advertisements in its index. Researchers using other university libraries would probably have to first use the CD-ROM index, and then look into the microfilm orshukusatsuban versions. Microfilm versions are available from 1888;shukusatsuban versions are available from 1931. Issues of theAsahi Shimbun printed since August 1984 are available throughLexis-Nexis Academic.
Asahi Shimbun was the official supporter for severalAsian Football Confederation's competitions, most recently the2019 AFC Asian Cup. They used to support both of AFC's club competitions; theAFC Champions League andAFC Cup until 2018 season. They were official sponsors of the2002 FIFA World Cup.
The paper is known for its liberal and progressive views.
That announcement capped a difficult year-and-a-half for independent media that saw the largest liberal newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, subdued and other critical commentators removed from the airwaves.
In 1980, one prominent critic in the leading left-liberal daily, theAsahi Shimbun, wrote, ...
... Accused of disrespect toward the emperor, the liberal-left Asahi Shimbun has repeatedly been the target of violence. ...
In August the left-of-centre Asahi newspaper retracted a series of articles it had published about the comfort women issue based on the testimony of a Japanese author Seiji Yoshida.
The Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading left-of-centre newspaper, with a circulation of 7.3m, is battling for its reputation after a third embarrassing ...
The left-of-centre Asahi Shimbun accused Abe of abandoning Japan's postwar pacifism after minimal public debate.
One frequent target is the Asahi Shimbun, which to many is the liberal newspaper of record in Japan.
Some months later, Japan's newspaper of record (the Asahi Shimbun) published a poem calling Hatoyama "the grim reaper" (shinigami).
..Asahi Shimbun, Japan's second largest newspaper and the 'newspaper of record' ..
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