Nikkei.com Biography & Web Analysis

With a daily circulation of more than three million, The Nikkei, originally known as The Nihon Keizai Shimbun (, lit. "Japan Economics Newspaper"), is the flagship publication of Nikkei, Inc., a Tokyo-based company. The newspaper has calculated the Nikkei 225, a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange, since 1950.

When Mitsui & Company's internal newspaper department began publishing the weekly market-quotation bulletin Chugai Bukka Shimpo (literally, Domestic and Foreign Commodity Price Newspaper), it laid the foundation for the career of the Nikei Yomiuri. In 1882, the division became the Shokyosha. The newspaper changed its name to Chugai Shgy Shimpo in 1889 after turning daily (except for Sunday) in 1885. In 1942, it was combined with Nikkan Kgy and Keizai Jiji and given the new name Nihon Sangy Keizai Shimbun. In 1946, the newspaper's name was changed to Nihon Keizai Shimbun.

It is one of Japan's four national dailies, together with the Asahi Shimbun, Yomiuri Shimbun, and Mainichi Shimbun.

Critics assert that the Nikkei is "relying too much on leaks, purportedly provided by business insiders," and that the publication is frequently perceived as unwilling to outright criticize Japanese companies, according to Shusuke Murai and Reiji Yoshida of the Japan Times. Hiroko Tabuchi of the New York Times called the Nikkei's acquisition of the Financial Times (FT) "Worrying," adding that "[The] Nikkei is simply a PR engine for Japanese business; it first disregarded the 2011 Olympus accounting controversy" (which FT broke). Additionally, practically any investigative work has been done on the Takata airbag defect by Nikkei. Japan Inc. is Nikkei.

Three Hong Kong police officers showed up at The Nikkei's Hong Kong location on August 10, 2020, armed with a court warrant. Investigations into a The Nikkei advertisement published a year earlier that requested funding for pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong were the cause.