<P> This article's focus is mass media and their interaction with politics in Japan . </P> <P> Japan is a society awash in information . Newspaper readership is, by a wide margin, the highest in the world . The five largest and most influential national newspapers are Yomiuri Shimbun, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, Sankei Shimbun, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun . There are also more than 100 local newspapers . The population, 99 percent literate, also consumes record numbers of books and magazines . The latter range from high - quality comprehensive general circulation intellectual periodicals such as Sekai (World), Chuo Koron (Central Review), and Bungei Shunju (Literary Annals) to sarariman manga (salaryman comics), comic books for adults that depict the vicissitudes and fantasies of contemporary office workers, and weeklies specializing in scandals . Japan probably also leads the world in the translation of works by foreign scholars and novelists . Most of the classics of Western political thought, such as The Republic by Plato and Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, for example, are available in Japanese . </P>

Which of the following best characterizes the impact of press clubs on the japanese mass media