Once again, as they’ve done for the past 54 years, Nikkei’s market-watching gurus have spoken. Appearing on the front page of the Dec. 10 edition of the thrice-weekly Nikkei Marketing Journal (Nikkei MJ), a trade newspaper covering retailing and distribution, was its fabled banzuke, a sumo-style list ranking 38 hit products that best exemplified consumer activities in 2025.
The rankings developed from the late 1960s after markets for basic goods such as home appliances became saturated, requiring manufacturers to place more emphasis on differentiation. Hit status could be achieved through technical improvements, added functions, distinctive styling, innovative product naming and pricing. To take a classic example: Sony’s original Walkman personal stereo cassette player, which made its debut in 1979, sold for ¥33,000. The units came bundled with headphones featuring high-performance, lightweight samarium-cobalt magnets, and it was essentially these that were credited with making Walkman a hit.
Nikkei MJ launched its banzuke in 1971 and has nurtured it over the past half century to reflect an astute grasp of Japan’s evolving consumer markets. Using selection criteria based on point-of-sale data from retail stores around the nation, the winners are introduced in the solid calligraphic style of the banzuke used from antiquity to rank sumo wrestlers. Starting at the top with two yokozuna (grand champions), the Nikkei listing features a total of 38 items aligned in east (the slightly more prestigious category) and west columns of 19 each.
AloJapan.com