Kodansha

• 1. Introduction

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  Kodansha, the largest publisher in Japan, began not as a publishing house but as a spin-off of a public speaking society. Seiji Noma founded the company in 1909, growing it from the Dai-Nippon Yubenkai, which translates roughly as the Greater Japan Oratorical Society. The first thing this oratory offshoot published was Yuben, a literary magazine. That origin is stranger than it sounds. What does competitive rhetoric have to do with manga, music labels, and a kendo practice hall? And how does a private family business hold onto Japan's largest publishing empire for more than a century? To understand Kodansha is to trace one of the most consequential publishing legacies in twentieth-century Japan. Along the way, the story touches on legal battles with national broadcasters, a staged-footage scandal, an unconventional beauty pageant, and a global streaming deal with Disney. The name Kodansha itself carries the company's unusual history inside it, and that story starts with a magazine that no longer exists.

• 2. A Name Born from Merger

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  The Kōdan Club, a now-defunct magazine, gave Kodansha its name. When Seiji Noma formally merged his publishing operation with the Dai-Nippon Yubenkai in 1911, the company took its identity from that magazine rather than from any of its other early publications. The legal name the world knows today, however, only became official in 1958, nearly five decades after the company was born. Family ownership remained the constant thread throughout those decades. Members of the Noma family continue to control the company either directly or through the Noma Cultural Foundation, a structure that insulates Kodansha from the shareholder pressures that shape publicly traded publishers. That family connection also shaped the physical environment of the company's Tokyo headquarters. In 1925, Seiji Noma established a kendo practice hall called Noma Dojo on the headquarters grounds. It stood for more than eighty years before being demolished in November 2007, replaced by a new dojo in a nearby building. The motto the company uses today was adopted alongside its current legal name, and the Otowa Group, which Kodansha Limited owns, manages subsidiary companies including King Records and Kobunsha.

• 3. Revenue, Recession, and Rivals

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  In the 2003 financial year, Kodansha reported revenues of 167 billion yen, compared to 150 billion yen for Shogakukan, its nearest rival. That gap was once far wider. At Kodansha's peak, the company led Shogakukan by more than 50 billion yen in revenue. The 2002 recession in Japan, accompanied by a wider downturn across the publishing industry, compressed that lead and delivered something the company had not experienced since the end of World War II: a loss. The 2002 financial year was the first time Kodansha posted a negative result in the postwar era. Shogakukan, described in reports as the second-largest publisher, fared comparatively better through that same period. The episode underscored how dependent even the largest publishers remained on the broader economic cycle, despite Kodansha's extraordinary scale and the depth of its magazine portfolio.

• 4. The NHK Confrontation

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  The October 2000 issue of Gendai, one of Kodansha's magazines, accused Japan's public broadcaster NHK of staging footage used in a 1997 news report on dynamite fishing in Indonesia. NHK responded by filing suit in the Tokyo District Court. The court ordered Kodansha to publish a retraction and to pay 4 million yen in damages. Kodansha appealed. The two sides eventually reached a settlement under which Kodansha issued only a partial retraction and paid no damages at all. The matter did not end there. Shukan Gendai, the sister magazine to Gendai, published a follow-up article that continued to probe the staged-footage controversy. The episode illustrated how frequently the editorial interests of Kodansha and NHK collide, even though the two organizations also cooperate. Cardcaptor Sakura, adapted from a Kodansha manga, aired in NHK's Eisei Anime Gekijo time-slot, and Kodansha published a companion magazine to the NHK children's show Okasan to Issho. In the 2005 takeover battle for Nippon Broadcasting System, Kodansha chose a side, selling its stock in the company to Fuji TV in support of that broadcaster's bid against Livedoor.

• 5. Manga, Awards, and the Miss iD Pageant

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  Weekly Shonen Magazine, one of Kodansha's flagship manga publications, has run since 1959. Nakayoshi, the shojo magazine, dates back to 1954. The Kodansha Manga Award has operated since 1977, though under earlier names it reaches back to 1960. These are not marginal outputs. They represent a publishing infrastructure for sequential art that spans children's comics, teen titles, young adult magazines, and literary manga for adult readers. Beyond manga, Kodansha administers a substantial roster of literary prizes, including the Noma Prize for Literature, the Yoshikawa Eiji Prize for Literature, and the Edogawa Rampo Award, among others. The Noma Award for the Translation of Japanese Literature reflects the company's interest in international reach. On a different register entirely, Kodansha organizes the Miss iD pageant, which started in 2012. The letters stand for identity, idol, I, and diversity. Organizers describe it as a search for diverse role models unbounded by conventional beauty and lifestyle standards. Married and transgender women are eligible to participate. The title is awarded to more than one person per year, and past holders include actress Tina Tamashiro, singer Rie Kaneko, and musician Ena Fujita. In 2018, a computer-generated character named Saya and an AI character named Rinna both reached the semifinal round.

• 6. English-Language Publishing and Global Expansion

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  Kodansha announced in 2011 that it was closing Kodansha International, its English-language publishing house, at the end of April of that year. Its American arm, Kodansha USA, stayed open. According to Daniel Mani of Kodansha USA, the American operation continued selling older titles throughout the transition period, even as new publications briefly paused. In September 2012, Kodansha USA began issuing new publications under Kentaro Tsugumi, the head administrator of the international branch. The first new release was a hardcover edition of The Spirit of Aikido. Acquisitions followed in subsequent years: Kodansha absorbed publisher Ichijinsha as a wholly owned subsidiary in October 2016, and in May 2024 it acquired publisher Wani Books under the same structure. On the digital front, Kodansha announced a manga distribution service called K Manga on the 21st of March 2023. The service launched exclusively in the United States on the 10th of May 2023, starting with approximately 400 titles. Seventy of those were simultaneous publications of ongoing series. By October 2024, K Manga had expanded to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. A further expansion in February 2025 added the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Mexico, and Brazil. On the 24th of June 2025, the service reached more than 30 countries. A separate deal with Disney, announced on the 30th of November 2022, extended the companies' longstanding partnership, with Kodansha committing to release anime originals based on its manga exclusively on Disney+, beginning with the second season of Tokyo Revengers. Kodansha also officially sponsors Tokyo Disneyland, a relationship that runs alongside those editorial and streaming arrangements.