Early one morning at the beginning of December, I rushed to the nearest newsstand to purchase a copy of the Nikkei Marketing Journal. It was somehow reassuring once again to see, emblazoned atop page one, the publication's traditional sumo-style banzuke (ranking sheet) — a layout virtually unchanged since 1971 — listing Japan's top-selling hit products of 2020.

Before dissecting the 2020 rankings, it’s worth examining how this annual list began. The 1970s marked the time when discerning consumers in Japan began showing a preference for greater variety. Prior to that time, manufacturers had been content to sell their rice cookers, washing machines, TV sets and other mass-produced household items by appealing mainly through brand affinity. Increasingly, companies realized that to compete successfully they would have to attract consumers with innovative products aimed at specifically targeted segments of the market.

The Nikkei Marketing Journal (originally called the Nikkei Ryutsu Shimbun) had been launched earlier in 1971 as a trade publication covering retailing and distribution. In order to promote itself to readers, its editors came up with the idea of ranking hits, compiled from retailers' point-of-sale data over the first 10 months of each year, into a sumo-style banzuke. As a result, that publication can be credited with having created a hit on its own, and, 49 years later, it still enjoys the trust of the general public as an accurate and impartial authority.