Yomiuri Shimbun

The Nisshusha newspaper company started The Yomiuri as a small daily newspaper in 1874. 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 Kōyō.

In 1924, Matsutarō Shōriki took over management of the company. His innovations included improved 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 paper shifted its focus to covering a wide range of news stories for 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.

The Yomiuri was the center of a labor scandal in 1945 and 1946. In October 1945, a post-war "democratization group" called for Shōriki's removal, as he supported Imperial Japan's policies during World War II. When Shōriki responded by firing five of the leading members of this group, the writers and editors launched the first "production control" strike on 27 October 1945. After the war, this method of striking became an important union strategy in the coal, railroad, and other industries. Matsutarō Shōriki was arrested in December 1945 as a Class-A war criminal and sent to Sugamo Prison. The Yomiuri's employees continued to produce the paper without heeding executive orders until a police raid on June 21, 1946.[ 16] In 1948, Shriki was released after the charges against him were dropped. He agreed to work as an informant for the CIA, according to research conducted by Professor Tetsuo Arima of Waseda University on declassified documents kept at NARA. 17][18]

Under the leadership of Tsuneo Watanabe, who served as editor-in-chief from 1991 until his death in 2024, Yomiuri would gain considerable international prominence.[ 19][20][21] By 1994, it would have a daily circulation which topped 10 million.[ 20][21] In addition, it would also hold considerable influence over Japanese politics, with Watanabe even boasting that was Japan's "last dictator."[ 20] In 2010, it would be recognized by Guinness World Records as the only newspaper with a morning circulation of more than 10 million copies and the highest daily newspaper circulation in the world. 22]

The Yomiuri partnered with The Wall Street Journal for editing, printing, and distribution in February 2009. Since March 2009 the major news headlines of the Journal's Asian edition have been summarized in Japanese in the evening edition of the Yomiuri.

The Yomiuri features an advice column, Jinsei Annai.

The Yomiuri has a history of promoting nuclear power in Japan.[ 23] In May 2011, when Naoto Kan, then Prime Minister of Japan, asked the Chubu Electric Power Company to shut down several of its Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plants due to safety concerns, the Yomiuri called the request "abrupt" and a difficult situation for Chubu Electric's shareholders. It wrote that Kan "should seriously reflect on the way he made his request."[ 24] It then followed up with an article wondering how dangerous Hamaoka really was and called Kan's request "a political judgment that went beyond technological worthiness."[ 25] The next day damage to the pipes inside the condenser was discovered at one of the plants following a leak of seawater into the reactor.[ 26]

In 2012, the paper reported that Nobutaka Tsutsui, the Minister for Agriculture, had divulged secret information to a Chinese enterprise. Tsutsui sued the Yomiuri Shimbun for libel and was awarded 3.3 million yen in damages in 2015, on the basis that the truth of the allegations could not be confirmed.[ 27]

In November 2014, the newspaper apologized after using the phrase "sex slave" to refer to comfort women, following its criticism of the Asahi Shimbun's coverage of Japan's World War II comfort women system.[28][29][30][clarification needed]

The Yomiuri newspaper said in an editorial in 2011 "No written material supporting the claim that government and military authorities were involved in the forcible and systematic recruitment of comfort women has been discovered", and that it regarded the Asian Women's Fund, set up to compensate for wartime abuses, as a failure based on a misunderstanding of history.[ 31] The New York Times reported on similar statements previously, writing that "The nation's (Japan's) largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, applauded the revisions" regarding removing the word "forcibly" from referring to laborers brought to Japan in the pre-war period and revising the comfort women controversy.[ 32] Yomiuri editorials have also opposed the DPJ government and denounced denuclearization as "not a viable option"