Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

is the second-largest music market in the world and the following lists cover the top-selling albums in the country of Japan, based on information provided by the

Recording Industry Association of Japan The is an industry trade group composed of Japanese corporations involved in the music industry. It was founded in 1942 as the Japan Phonogram Record Cultural Association, and adopted its current name in 1969. The RIAJ's activities include pr ...

and

Oricon , established in 1999, is the holding company at the head of a Japanese corporate group that supplies statistics and information on music and the music industry in Japan and Western music. It started as, which was founded by Sōkō Koike i ...

Inc.

Best-selling physical albums in Japan

In the history of the

weekly albums chart, which started in January 1970, only 280 out of all of the charting albums have sold more than one million copies, a feat mostly achieved by domestic acts.

List of best-selling albums by domestic acts

This is a list of the top-selling albums in Japan, based on data compiled by Oricon. Prior to January 1987, the domestic albums chart was separated into LPs (created in 1970),

cassette tapes The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Otte ...

(introduced in 1974) and

compact discs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in October ...

(launched in 1985), until their unification, which remains the current form. It is worth noting that Oricon only takes into consideration physical sales for its charts, meaning that digital purchases are excluded. The best-selling album is ''

First Love First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

'' (1999) by female solo artist

Hikaru Utada , who is also known by the mononym Utada, is a Japanese-American pop singer, songwriter and producer. By 2010, Utada had become one of the most influential, and best-selling, musical artists in Japan. Born in the United States to Japanese parent ...

, which sold over 7.5 million copies by the end of that year.

Ryuichi Kawamura is a Japanese singer, songwriter, record producer, actor and author. He is best known as lead singer of the rock band Luna Sea since 1989. He started a solo career in 1997, three years before Luna Sea disbanded in 2000. In 2005, Kawamura for ...

's ''Love'' (1997) topped the album chart with sales of 1,021,000 copies, making him the only male solo artist to have an album sell over one million copies in its first week in Oricon history. ''Love'' went on to sell 2,788,000 copies, and holds the record as the best-selling male solo album of all time. Whereas,

Mr. Children , commonly referred to by their contracted nickname , are a Japanese pop rock band formed in 1989. Consisting of Kazutoshi Sakurai, Kenichi Tahara, Keisuke Nakagawa, and Hideya Suzuki, they made their major label debut in 1992. They are one o ...

's '' Atomic Heart'' (1994), still remains its position as the top-selling original studio album by a male band.

List of Million-certified albums by the Recording Industry Association of Japan

This is the list of the albums that have shipped over 1,000,000 copies and been certified Million by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ). Albums are listed in alphabetical order of each recording artists' name.

Best-selling albums by year

Sales figures derived from Oricon.

References

External links