“Oshigami”: The Taboo at the Heart of Japan’s Newspaper Industry
One of the most deeply entrenched taboos in Japan’s media industry is a practice known as “oshigami” — literally, “pushed papers.”
Oshigami refers to newspaper copies that publishers supply to their sales agents in excess of the number actually needed to meet subscriber demand. Sales agents are nevertheless required, formally or in practice, to accept and pay for these excess copies.
The issue is significant because newspaper circulation figures are also used as a basis for determining advertising rates. If circulation figures include substantial numbers of newspapers that never reach paying readers, advertisers may be paying rates based on an inflated picture of a newspaper’s actual readership.
Based on my own calculations, I estimate that oshigami generates at least approximately US$590 million a year in improperly obtained revenue for Japan’s newspaper industry as a whole.
In my view, the practice also raises serious issues under Japan’s Antimonopoly Act. Yet despite the enormous scale and longevity of the problem, Japanese authorities have failed to eliminate it effectively.
The implications extend far beyond the finances of newspaper distribution.
Japan’s major newspapers are closely connected with major television networks through large media groups and business relationships. These media organizations are supposed to investigate wrongdoing and hold powerful institutions accountable. But when the wrongdoing concerns the economic foundations of their own industry, that scrutiny largely disappears.
That is precisely what makes oshigami such an important media issue.
For more than half a century, the practice has persisted while receiving remarkably little sustained investigative coverage from the very newspapers and affiliated television broadcasters that would ordinarily be expected to expose misconduct on such a scale.
The result is a profound contradiction: institutions whose public mission is to expose hidden wrongdoing have been unwilling to put a scalpel to a long-standing problem within their own industry.
The accompanying video shows the collection of newspapers alleged to be oshigami — physical evidence of a problem that has remained largely outside the mainstream media spotlight for decades.
Oshigami is therefore not merely a dispute over newspaper distribution.
It raises a much larger question about Japanese journalism:
Can the press credibly hold governments, corporations, and other powerful institutions accountable when it is unwilling to investigate a serious and long-standing problem within its own business?
