OSAKA –

With the July 10 Upper House election just around the corner, politics is once again in the air as Diet members head back to their local constituencies to campaign and promote their party platforms.

In the process, they have to deal with local views on local, national and even international issues. Such attitudes are often shaped less by the national, Tokyo-based media and more by community or regional reporting.

What are Japan's major influential community and regional newspapers?

In Hokkaido, there's the Hokkaido Shimbun, while major newspapers serving the Tohoku region include the To-o Nippo, the Kahoku Shimpo and the Fukushima Minpo.

The Tokyo region has the Tokyo Shimbun, which is actually part of the Nagoya-based Chunichi Shimbun newspaper. The Kyoto Shimbun and Kobe Shimbun newspapers serve those major cities, while the Chugoku Shimbun covers the Hiroshima area. In Kyushu, the Nishinippon Shimbun covers the island, while Okinawa has the Ryukyu Shimpo and the Okinawa Times.

How big are they in terms of circulation and market share?

According to Japan Audit Bureau of Circulations data for April, while major national newspapers sell a large number of copies each day — 9 million for the Yomiuri Shimbun and 6.6 million for the Asahi Shimbun — the regional newspaper with the largest daily circulation was the Chunichi Shimbun, selling around 2.4 million copies, followed by the Hokkaido Shimbun's circulation of just over 1 million.

However, in terms of market share, a Yomiuri Shimbun report, based on JABC figures, said local newspapers held the top share in 37 of the 47 prefectures nationwide in the first half of 2015. The Chunichi Shimbun had a 50 percent share in Aichi Prefecture, and the Fukui Shimbun and the Tokushima Shimbun each held a more than 70 percent share within their prefectures, respectively.

The Nihonkai Shimbun had a 69 percent share in Tottori Prefecture, while the Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun held a 58 percent share in Yamanashi Prefecture. In Okinawa, the Ryukyu Shimpo and the Okinawa Times are virtually tied, together occupying more than 50 percent of the local market.

Although their shares have declined in the past decade, the figures indicate locally produced newspapers remain the most widely read in most prefectures excluding the Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas.

What sets regional and metro daily newspapers apart?

Although local-level newspapers depend largely on wire services for national and international news, their depth of reporting, and often the tone, on issues related to their regions is often different from that of national newspapers.

After Japan entered negotiations for the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, the Hokkaido Shimbun researched in great detail the projected impact the TPP would have on Hokkaido's agriculture and economy. The end result was a broader, more nuanced and often skeptical picture than the one often painted by purely pro- or anti-TPP national media reports.

On the other end of Japan, the Ryukyu Shimpo and Okinawa Times have long been praised by traditional left-wing parties and supporters as feisty, truly independent voices for Okinawa, and attacked by right-wing and pro-U.S. military advocates as being anti-American for the critical way they report on local base issues and the U.S.-Japan security alliance.

Last summer, editor-in-chiefs of the two newspapers said freedom of the press and democracy itself may be at stake after verbal attacks on their work and on that of other media at a meeting of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers.

At the gathering of junior LDP lawmakers close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, guest speaker Naoki Hyakuta, a novelist and former NHK governor, reportedly said local newspapers in Okinawa that were critical of the government "must be destroyed."

How do regional newspapers view the coming Upper House election?

Editorials recently published by some of the larger regional block papers suggest the general issues of the economy and collective self-defense are still very much on the minds of voters.

In a June 18 editorial, the Hokkaido Shimbun noted next month's election takes place just over nine months after the new security legislation went into effect. It warned that if the Self-Defense Forces, which have a large presence in Hokkaido, are sent abroad for peacekeeping duties, they could quickly find themselves under fire, and pondered whether a purely Japanese peacekeeping effort could somehow turn into a full-fledged battle to protect U.S. forces, resulting in SDF casualties.

A June 10 Chunichi Shimbun editorial on the election also talked about the security legislation, and the way Prime Minister Abe's government forced it through the Diet by claiming it did not violate the Constitution. The paper added that voters would have to judge if Abe made a wise decision in postponing until 2019 the consumption tax rise to 10 percent. Meanwhile, the Nishinippon Shimbun editorialized that the election would be a referendum on public trust in Abe and the increased power of the Prime Minister's Office in decision-making, but that it should not be forgotten that recent media polls show more than half of Japanese oppose his attempt to revise the Constitution.

What is the major challenge facing community and regional newspapers?

In a nutshell, it's ensuring their own survival at a time when Japan's regions face depopulation and as fewer young people read traditional newspapers.

Surveys of public attitudes toward the media, such as one conducted last August by the Press and Telecommunications Association, show that people who read printed newspapers read community news articles most, but that those who check the internet for news read mostly sports and celebrity news. That makes a coordinated, and profitable, strategy between "hard" print and softer online news difficult for smaller regional newspapers.

In response, they are increasingly banding together and offering a variety of package deals, sharing resources, and entering into joint marketing efforts that target a set of readers in different regions that they believe share common interests.

For example, the Okinawa Times and the Fukui Shimbun have teamed up to offer "Fukunawa," a free website that offers readers news from both papers, in the hope of increasing subscriptions.

As local advertising revenue shrinks, more online tie-ups between various regional news outlets are expected, offering local readers a mixture of hometown news and news from other regions for one price. And in some cases, the print editions of local newspapers are becoming available in other parts of the country. The Tokyo Shimbun is now available at Naha airport.