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overview
This profile considers the Fujisankei group of Japan.
It covers -
introduction
Fujisankei is a broadcast, film, press, direct marketing,
retail, museum management and property development conglomerate.
It claims to be one of the world's largest media groups.
Like competitors such as Yomiuri
and Asahi most revenue comes from
activity within Japan.
the group
Fujisankei Communications Group (FCG) comprises around
100 companies concerned with television, newspaper, radio,
book and magazine publishing, music and video production,
direct marketing, property and museum management. It is
a loose keiretsu founded by the Shikanai family. The family
saw its management control dissipate in the early 1990s.
An indication of the holdings is here.
Its Nippon Broadcasting System is a dominant player in
Japan's radio industry, with 37 stations, and one of the
world's largest radio broadcasting networks. Its major
arm is the National Radio Network (NRN); other units include
the Nippon Cultural Broadcasting Group.
Nippon Broadcasting has a major stake in Fuji Television.
Fuji TV has 28 domestic stations, 20 overseas offices
and a 30% stake in interactive broadcasting venture Satellite
Service. It claims to broadcast to around 98% of the Japanese
population.
The group's flagship newspaper is The Sankei Shimbun,
Japan's second-largest national daily with a circulation
of around two million. Other Sankei-affiliated newspapers
include the daily Sankei Sports, the tabloid Fuji
Evening News, the Japan Industrial Journal,
the free Sankei Living Shimbun and regional Osaka
Shimbun. Magazine imprints include women's magazine
ESSE, men's weekly SPA!, Caz biweekly
for young women, JUNIE and Atarashii Sumai no
Sekkei.
The
Pony Canyon Group engages in the production, promotion,
and merchandising of compact disks, cassette tapes, feature
films (with Fuji TV) and concert videocassettes, computer
games and CD-ROMs. Fujisankei Living Service is one of
Japan's largest mail-order companies.
Sankei Building and affiliated companies are active in
property development, leasing and management in Tokyo,
Osaka and Hiroshima.
The Shikanais collect trophy art - in particular sculpture
by Rodin, Hepworth and Calder. The group operates several
museums housing the collections: the Hakone Open-Air Museum,
the Utsukushi-ga-hara Open-Air Museum near the Japan Alps
and Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo.
Like Matsushita and other Japanese conglomerates, Fujisankei's
expansion offshore through acquisition of production facilities
and rights in Europe and the Americas has had indifferent
success. The group acquired but disposed of two music
catalogues, notably Richard Branson's
Virgin Music.
Sankei Shimbun
The Japan Media Review indicates
that the right-of-centre Sankei Shimbun ranks
sixth in daily newspaper circulation in Japan (second
as a business daily) with 2.17 million copies of the morning
edition and 636,649 of the evening edition. Over 63% of
the heads of households that read Sankei are
older than 50. It was founded in 1933 as the Nihon
Kogyo Shimbun (Industry & Business), becoming
the Sankei Shimbun in 1942 through a merger with
regional titles.
Sister publication, the evening Yukan Fuji, sells
640,000 copies. Sankei Sports, Japan's top selling
sports paper, was founded in 1955 and has a circulation
of 820,000.
Livedoor
In 2005 Takafumi Horie's Livedoor acquired a major stake
in Nippon Broadcasting System (which had a substantial
stake in the much larger Fuji Television). Livedoor was
a high profile internet conglomerate with interests ranging
from online content production to brokerage, consumer
credit, mail order retailing and management of used car
dealerships.
The Livedoor move, apparently funded by debt, was regarded
by Nippon and Fuji as hostile. It resulted in litigation
as Fuji sought to increase its stake in Nippon to ensure
that Livedoor did not gain control of both broadcasters
and the Shikanais disputed onsale by Daiwa Securities
SMBC of part of their stake in Nippon.
Livedoor subsequently agreed to sell its controlling stake
in NBS to Fuji Television for a notional profit of 300m
yen (US$2.8m), issuing new shares - around 13% of its
total shares outstanding - to Fuji for 44bn yen (US$415m)
in a private offering.
Horie commented that
People
ask me if I am another Rupert Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch
is the chairman of a media conglomerate. But we are
planning to become a media, IT and financial conglomerate.
Those
ambitions were somewhat derailed after Horie's offices
and residences were raided by Japanese officials in January
2006 in conjunction with claims that he had breached the
nation's securities regime. He was arrested for fraud
in 2006.
Yoshiaki Murakami's MAC Asset Management Inc investment
fund allegedly acquired shares in Nippon Broadcasting
after Horie told him that Livedoor intended to make a
takeover bid. Prosecutors at Murakami's insider trading
trial in 2006 claimed that his fund bought 9.95 billion
yen of Nippon Broadcasting shares after his meeting with
Horie and sold them for a 3 billion yen profit days after
Livedoor announced its bid.
In 2006 Livedoor reported a loss of 40.84 billion yen
(US$352m) on annual group sales of 137.91 billion yen.
It also unloaded its financial services unit, which had
provided 80% of the group's profit.
Horie was found guilty in March 2007 by the Tokyo District
Court of violating securities laws at Livedoor. He was
sentenced to two years and six months in prison.
studies
There is no major English-language study of the Shikanai
family or Fujisankei.
For the group's early history see Gregory Kasza's The
State & The Mass Media in Japan 1918-1945 (Berkeley:
Uni of California Press 1988). A perspective on more recent
developments is provided by Laurie Freeman's Closing
the Shop: Information Cartels and Japan’s Mass Media
(Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2000), Jayson Chun's 'A
Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots'?: A Social History
of Japanese Television, 1953-1973 (London: Routledge
2006) and the essays in Media and Politics in Japan
(Honolulu: Uni of Hawaii Press 1996) edited by Susan Pharr
& Ellis Krauss. Mass Communication in Japan
(Ames: Iowa State Press 1997) by Anne Cooper-Chen offers
insights regarding consumption.
For Richard Branson see Mick Brown's Richard Branson:
The Inside Story (London: Michael Joseph 1988), Tom
Bower's Branson (London: Fourth Estate 2000) and
Tim Jackson's Virgin King (New York: HarperCollins
1994). Branson's own Losing My Virginity: The Autobiography
(London: Virgin 1998) is a long advertorial. Other
works are highlighted here.
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