Asahi Sonorama (朝日ソノラマ) is a Japanese book, magazine, and manga publisher and a division of Asahi Shimbun Publications, which is a subsidiary of the publisher of the Asahi Shimbun. "Sonorama" is a coined word combining sonus, the Latin word for "sound", and horama, the Greek word for "sight". The name was acquired through the purchase of the trademark for sonosheets.
Asahi Sonorama was created as a division of Asahi Shimbunsha on September 9, 1959 under the name "Asahi Sonopress". It was initially established to record interviews, news, crime scene investigations, and articles on a variety of topics, and then release them on tape and sonosheets in the audio recording magazine Asahi Sonorama (from whence the company got its name). While doing this, the company also began publishing other magazines, manga collections, and novels.
Even though the sound quality of sonosheets was lower than that of vinyl records, the sonosheets were flexible and could last a long time. Asahi Sonorama found a market among those who couldn't afford the high price of LP records and was therefore able to enter the record market and compete with record companies and publishers.