毎日新聞

Mainichi Shimbun, literally "The Daily News," is one of Japan's largest newspapers. Its name is somewhat misleading: like most Japanese "dailies," the Mainichi actually comes out twice a day, in both morning and evening editions. Since the paper's foundation in 1872 by future prime minister Kato Takaaki, it has grown into a sprawling media empire with over a hundred domestic bureaus and some 29 overseas, employing 4,000 people.

In the olden days, it was known as the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun. The Tokyo paper absorbed future prime minister Hara Takashi's Osaka Mainichi Shimbun in 1911, and the combined company became known as the Mainichi Shimbun in 1943. Quite a few famous people—Hitomi Kinue, Nitobe Inazo, Inoue Yasushi—have come from the Nichi Nichi and Mainichi's ranks.

Today, the paper has five main offices in Japan—Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, and Kita-Kyushu—as well as general bureaus in Kanazawa and Fukuoka, and overseas headquarters in Washington, D.C., London, Bangkok, and Beijing. There is a Mainichi office in virtually every major town in Japan.

Mainichi also owns, among other companies, the TBS and MBS television stations, the Sports Nippon Shimbun, Korea Satellite Broadcasting, and a large collection of meeting halls and quasi-independent printing and distribution firms. Mainichi also publishes the pleonasmically-named Mainichi Daily News, an English newspaper available online at http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/ .

http://www.mainichi.co.jp