Country of origin Japan No. of employees 366 (July 2009) Number of employees 366 | Key people Tōru Ueno, president Official website www.bunshun.co.jp Founded January 1923 | |
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Publication types magazines and other publications Profiles | ||
Bungeishunjū Ltd. (株式会社文藝春秋, Kabushiki-gaisha Bungeishunjū), established in 1923, is a Japanese publishing company known for its leading monthly magazine Bungeishunjū. The company was founded by Kan Kikuchi. It grants the annual Akutagawa Prize, one of the most prestigious literary awards in Japan, as well as the annual Naoki Prize for popular novelists. It also grants the annual Bungeishunjū Manga Award for achievement in the manga and illustration fields. It is headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo.
Contents
- List of magazines
- Company history
- Marco Polo Holocaust denial article
- Contributors and editors
- References
The company publishes Bungakukai (文學界), the weekly Bunshun (週刊文春), and the sports magazine Number, which represent public opinion of literary, political, and sport-journalistic culture, respectively. The Bunshun, in particular, has come to be known for litigation involving freedom of speech issues, particularly alleged privacy violations and defamation; see, for example, Mitsuo Kagawa.
List of magazines
The magazines published by Bungeishunjū include:
Company history
Bungeishunjū was founded in 1923 by writer Kan Kikuchi. The company was disbanded in March 1946 but was reestablished in June of the same year.
Marco Polo Holocaust denial article
In February 1995 a Japanese magazine named Marco Polo, a 250,000-circulation monthly published by Bungei Shunju, ran a Holocaust denial article by physician Masanori Nishioka which stated:
The "Holocaust" is a fabrication. There were no execution gas chambers in Auschwitz or in any other concentration camp. Today, what are displayed as "gas chambers" at the remains of the Auschwitz camp in Poland are a post-war fabrication by the Polish communist regime or by the Soviet Union, which controlled the country. Not once, neither at Auschwitz nor in any territory controlled by the Germans during the Second World War, was there "mass murder of Jews" in "gas chambers."
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center instigated a boycott of Bungei Shunju advertisers, including Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, and Cartier. Within days, Bungei Shunju shut down Marco Polo and its editor, Kazuyoshi Hanada, quit, as did the president of Bungei Shunju, Kengo Tanaka.