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AS newspaper companies across the developed world took a beating in the past few years, those in one rich country merely shrugged. Japanese newspapers are by far the worlds biggest: Yomiuri sells 10m copies each morning and another 3.6m in the evening. Newspapers enjoy such close ties with politicians and companies that news in Japan does not so much break as ooze. Yet the giants are teetering. The problem is not circulation, which has held up well thanks to a distinctive system of distribution. Virtually all Japanese newspapers are delivered by agents who work on commission, frequently turning up on doorsteps to collect money. People carry on buying newspapers in Japan for the same reason they keep paying for gym memberships elsewhere: pushy salesmen. Between 1999 and 2009 the combined circulation of morning and evening papers in Japan fell by just 6.3%, according to Nihon Shimbun Kyokai , the newspaper publishers association. By contrast, American newspapers lost 10.6% of their paying readers between 2008 and 2009. Yet the population of newspaper readers is ageing. Young people are less likely to read newspapers than their elders. Nor do they appear to be growing into the habit as they age, says Takashi Kasuya, an executive at Asahi, the second-biggest newspaper. Although Japanese newspapers have been careful not to put all their articles online free of charge, a generation has decided that the news it obtains from television, mobile phones and the internet is enough. The young have also come to dislike newspapers clutter. | 
