The Nikkei

The Nikkei, officially known as the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, is the main newspaper of Tokyo-based Nikkei, Inc. With more than 3 million subscribers, it is the largest financial newspaper in the world and the only business daily in Japan. It is one of the country’s four national newspapers, alongside The Asahi Shimbun, the Yomiuri Shimbun, and the Mainichi Shimbun. The newspaper has calculated the Nikkei 225 stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange since 1950.

The paper’s origins date back to 1876, when an in-house news department at Mitsui & Company began publishing Chugai Bukka Shimpo, a weekly bulletin of market prices. That department became the independent Shokyosha in 1882. The publication went daily (excluding Sundays) in 1885 and was renamed Chugai Shōgyō Shimpo in 1889. In 1942, it merged with Nikkan Kōgyō and Keizai Jiji to become Nihon Sangyō Keizai Shimbun, and then changed to its current name, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, in 1946.

On April 25, 1990, the paper signed an agreement with Singapore Press Holdings to print a same-day edition for Southeast Asia, with the first issue published in Singapore on October 1 of that year.

Critics, as reported by Shusuke Murai and Reiji Yoshida of The Japan Times, say the Nikkei relies too heavily on leaks from corporate insiders and is often reluctant to harshly criticize Japanese companies. Hiroko Tabuchi of The New York Times described the Nikkei’s purchase of the Financial Times as “worrying.”

On August 10, 2020, three officers from the Hong Kong Police Force visited the Nikkei’s Hong Kong branch with a court order, as part of an investigation into an advertisement placed in the paper a year earlier that called for international support for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests.