Shogakukan, Inc. was founded primarily as an educational publishing company. The company published educational magazines for elementary school students at every academic level, as well as instructional manuals for schoolteachers in each school grade. Publications included picture books, illustrated dictionaries and encyclopedias.

In 1959, Shogakukan launched its first weekly comic magazine, Shonen Sunday, targeted primarily to boys. That led to a variety of other comic magazines to be published for young children, girls, youth and adults.

As one of Japan's largest publishers, Shogakukan publishes over 9,000 books per year and nearly 70 different magazines.

Shogakukan publishes a variety of books including children's books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, geography, literature, art, education, medicine, photography, paperback, gardening and works of history of folklore.

Many Shogakukan comic originals such as DORAEMON have been produced into anime. The company sells its own original videos and DVDs and through Shogakukan Production (ShoPro), it produces successful animated films based on their original comics. The company works with numerous publishing partners including Garzanti (Italy), Commercial Press (Beijing), and F.A. Brockhouse (Germany), among others.