The Nikkei

• 1. Introduction

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  The Nikkei holds a distinction that no other newspaper in the world can claim: with over 3 million subscribers, it is the largest financial newspaper on the planet. Published by Nikkei, Inc. out of Tokyo, it is Japan's only business daily, and it sits alongside the Asahi Shimbun, the Yomiuri Shimbun, and the Mainichi Shimbun as one of just four national newspapers in the country. But the Nikkei is not merely a newspaper. Since 1950, it has calculated the Nikkei 225, the stock market index that tracks the Tokyo Stock Exchange. How did a weekly commodity price bulletin from a trading company's in-house department become the financial voice of Japan? And what does the controversy around its reporting tell us about the pressures on the press in a country with such deep ties between business and media?

• 2. From Mitsui to Masthead

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  In 1876, an in-house newspaper department at Mitsui and Company began printing a weekly bulletin called Chugai Bukka Shimpo, which translates as Domestic and Foreign Commodity Price Newspaper. That modest market-quotation sheet was the seed of what would grow into a global financial institution. By 1882, the department had been spun off as an independent organization called the Shokyosha. Three years later, in 1885, the publication became a daily paper, running every day except Sunday. A further name change came in 1889, when it was renamed Chugai Shogyo Shimpo. The Second World War accelerated consolidation across the Japanese press. In 1942, the paper merged with Nikkan Kogyo and Keizai Jiji and was given the name Nihon Sangyo Keizai Shimbun. Four years on, in 1946, it shed that wartime identity and took the name it carries today: Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the full form from which Nikkei is derived.

• 3. Calculating the Market

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  Since 1950, the Nikkei has performed a function that goes beyond journalism. The paper calculates the Nikkei 225, the benchmark stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange. That responsibility places the newspaper at the center of how Japan's financial performance is read, measured, and reported around the world. No other newspaper in Japan holds a comparable role in the mechanics of a national market index. The connection between the paper's editorial identity and its stewardship of the 225 shapes the expectations readers and investors bring to every edition.

• 4. Regional and Global Reach

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  On the 25th of April, 1990, the Nikkei signed an agreement with Singapore Press Holdings to print a same-day edition for readers across Southeast Asia. The first Singapore edition was scheduled to publish from the 1st of October of that year. The arrangement signaled the paper's intent to serve Japanese business interests and regional financial readers beyond the home islands. That move toward Southeast Asia placed the Nikkei on a trajectory that would eventually lead to far bigger international ambitions, including its purchase of the Financial Times.

• 5. Questions of Independence

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  Shusuke Murai and Reiji Yoshida of The Japan Times have reported that critics accuse the Nikkei of depending too heavily on leaks apparently provided by corporate insiders. Those same critics say the paper is often reluctant to bluntly criticize Japanese firms. New York Times reporter Hiroko Tabuchi put the concern in sharper terms when commenting on the Nikkei's acquisition of the Financial Times, saying the Nikkei is "basically a PR machine for Japanese biz." Tabuchi pointed to a specific example: when the Olympus accounting scandal broke in 2011, the Nikkei initially ignored the story. It was the Financial Times that broke the scandal, not the Japanese business daily best positioned to cover it. Tabuchi also cited the paper's near-absence from reporting on the Takata airbag defect, calling its investigative work on that issue nonexistent and summarizing the paper's posture as "Nikkei is Japan Inc." These critiques raise a question that cuts to the heart of financial journalism: can a newspaper that calculates a market index, depends on corporate sources, and is embedded in the business establishment it covers maintain genuine independence?

• 6. Pressure in Hong Kong

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  On the 10th of August, 2020, three officers from the Hong Kong Police Force arrived at the Nikkei's Hong Kong branch carrying a court order. The visit was connected to an investigation into an advertisement that had run in the newspaper approximately a year earlier. That advertisement had called for international support for the pro-democracy protests then taking place in Hong Kong. The police visit to a foreign financial newspaper's bureau illustrated the reach of Hong Kong's shifting legal and political environment into the operations of the international press. For the Nikkei, whose regional edition had been serving Southeast Asia for three decades, the episode marked a new kind of exposure for a publication historically anchored in business reporting rather than political coverage.