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Summary

documented Total daily circulation across the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association's 104 member papers fell to 24,868,122 in October 2025, down 1,748,456 copies (6.6%) year on year — the eighth consecutive year of declines above 5%.1 documented This is more than half below the 1997 peak of 53.76 million.1 documented Per household, circulation has fallen to 0.42 copies.1

The per-paper picture (morning edition, Oct 2025)

Paper Circulation Change
Yomiuri 5.30m −7.8%
Asahi 3.18m −4.6%
Nikkei 1.25m −7.3%
Mainichi 1.15m −15.2%
Sankei 0.79m −5.3%

documented The five national dailies together account for 11.69m copies — 53.0% of the total — and for 64.0% of the year's total decline, so the contraction is hitting the national papers harder than the regional ones.1

The digital asymmetry

documented Nikkei's paid digital subscriptions reached 1.02m (Jan 2025), on track to exceed its print base within a few years; Asahi's paid digital subscriptions have been flat at around 308,000 (Sept 2025) after losing millions of print readers over the decade.12 documented Yomiuri does not sell digital separately — it treats digital as an adjunct to print.1 documented Across the industry, 74 of 79 local and national papers generate less than 5% of revenue from digital sales.2

Why this matters for the left

inferred The liberal titles are the ones with the weakest digital conversion relative to their print loss — Asahi has shed millions of print readers while its paid digital base stayed flat, whereas the centre-right Nikkei converted successfully.1 inferred If that pattern holds, the resource base of liberal print journalism contracts faster than the resource base of conservative print journalism, independently of any political pressure. What would test this: compare revenue per reader, not circulation, across the five titles over the next three years.

Links

Footnotes

  1. Isaka Kimiaki, Media Gekidō Institute (Dec 2025) — 2025 association circulation 24.87m (−6.6%), per-paper morning-edition figures, household ratio, digital subscriber counts, the 1997 peak. ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. Reuters Institute DNR 2026 Japan — 24m total circulation (Oct 2025, −6.57%), Nikkei vs Asahi digital subscribers, local-paper digital revenue share, TV viewing decline, the 2026 election's social-media dynamics. ↩↩