Japan’s Declining Newspaper Industry and the Oshigami Problem

Japanese newspapers are losing readers very quickly.

In Europe and the United States, many newspaper companies have moved from printed newspapers to the Internet. This change has helped some of them build a more stable business. Japanese newspaper companies, however, have been slower to make this change.

One reason is Japan’s traditional newspaper delivery system. For many years, newspaper companies grew by using local newspaper shops to deliver printed newspapers directly to people’s homes. Because this system was very important to their business, it has been difficult for them to move away from printed newspapers.

Now, however, the number of printed newspapers is falling very quickly. In 2000, about 47 million newspapers were printed in Japan. By 2025, the number had fallen to about 23 million. The overall decline in Japanese newspaper circulation and the industry’s relatively slow digital transformation have also been reported by the Reuters Institute.

The circulation figures for Japan’s five major national newspapers in June 2026 were as follows. The numbers in parentheses show how many copies each newspaper lost compared with June 2025:

• Yomiuri Shimbun: 4,997,651 copies (down 444,899)
• Asahi Shimbun: 3,059,598 copies (down 174,715)
• Nikkei Shimbun: 1,173,206 copies (down 115,233)
• Mainichi Shimbun: 1,054,237 copies (down 157,335)
• Sankei Shimbun: 740,939 copies (down 57,313)

These numbers show that all five major newspapers are losing print circulation. Similar ABC circulation data from March 2026 also show large year-on-year declines across all five newspapers.

However, I believe that the real number of newspapers being read may be even lower. This is because the official circulation numbers include “oshigami.” Oshigami are extra newspapers that newspaper companies send to local newspaper shops even when those shops do not need or sell them.

I have studied this problem since 1997. I estimate that at least 30 to 40 percent of Japanese newspapers may be oshigami.

I believe this is an important problem because oshigami can make newspaper sales look larger than they really are. I also argue that Japanese newspapers and TV stations do not report much about this problem because it is connected to the newspaper industry’s own business.

My main point is that Japan’s newspaper industry may be in a more serious situation than the official circulation numbers suggest. Printed newspaper sales are falling rapidly, the move to digital news has been slow, and the oshigami system may be hiding part of the real decline.