Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Feb | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
The head of the International Olympic Committee’s evaluation commission arrived Friday for an on-site inspection this week of Tokyo’s bid for the 2020 Games. IOC Vice President Craig Reedie was welcomed by Japanese Olympic Committee President Tsunekazu Takeda and Tokyo Gov. Naoki Inose, who ...
More than 80 percent of respondents in a new poll said they are open to foreign nationals of Japanese descent living in the nation, the Cabinet Office reported. The office’s first survey of its kind, released Thursday, found 80.9 percent of respondents expressed openness ...
Rare 1963 video footage of singer Kyu Sakamoto, known outside Japan for his U.S. hit song “Sukiyaki,” is to be released on DVD in April. The rare footage was taken during the singer’s trip to the United States in 1963, when the song, whose ...
Al-Qaida's top commander in Mali is reportedly killed, signaling a significant blow to the Islamist insurgents battling a French-led intervention in the African country.
Panasonic Corp. is developing a tablet computer for business customers that runs on Microsoft Corp.’s Windows 8 operating system under their new business partnership, sources said Friday. The tablet, which will have a 20-inch liquid crystal display panel, will be the world’s first of ...
A global team of experts says residents zapped by the most radiation from the Fukushima nuclear meltdowns face an increased cancer risk so small it probably won't be detectable.
A greenling caught in the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant's harbor is found to contain a level of radioactive cesium 5,100 times above the government-set safety limit.
Pope Benedict XVI leaves the Catholic Church in unprecedented limbo as he becomes its first leader in 600 years to resign, exiting with an extraordinary pledge to obey his successor.
Japan plans to join the global parts-sharing system for F-35 stealth jet production, in an exception to its long-held principle of not exporting weapons or their components.
The year’s first strong south winds, signaling the arrival of spring, cut through Tokyo and other parts of Japan on Friday, the weather agency said. Temperatures rose to 15.2 degrees in Tokyo, 18.8 in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, and 17.8 in Fukuoka, while winds swept ...
The president of All Nippon Airways, Boeing’s biggest single customer for its troubled 787 Dreamliner, said Friday he believes the U.S. manufacturer has made progress in resolving problems with the aircraft’s lithium-ion batteries. How soon Boeing can fix the problems, which have led to ...
Microsoft Corp.’s first-ever tablet computer will hit the Japanese market in two weeks, the company said Friday, hoping to break the iPad’s domination. Five months after its debut in several other countries, Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet will reach store shelves here March 15, Microsoft ...
Consumer prices fell 0.2 percent in January from a year earlier for the third straight month of decline, due mainly to a drop in household durable goods, including air conditioners, the government said Friday. The core consumer price index, excluding fresh foods, stood at ...
The second-oldest meteorite in Japan, the Minamino, is housed in Yobitsugi Shrine in Nagoya. The town of Hoshizaki has seen meteorites fall three times in the surrounding area, and given its location near the coast of Aichi Prefecture, it is known as “the cape ...
South Korean President Park Geun Hye on Friday urged Japan to squarely face up to past historical issues, alluding to its brutal colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. “We can open up a future of common prosperity with Japan only when Japan honestly reflects ...
Akira Miyasada drives his Kobe-registered car along the deserted beaches in the Ogatsu district of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, stopping to speak with locals and listen carefully to their stories from the devastating March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. He hears accounts of loss, damage ...
After protests erupted across China last year over the Senkaku Islands, sales of Japanese-branded cars there plummeted. Nissan Motor Co.’s prescription for winning back Chinese drivers: a quieter ride and better gas mileage. Nissan introduced its new Teana sedan Tuesday in the southern city ...
Japan’s purchases of U.S. Treasuries helped it overtake China last June as the largest foreign holder of American securities, including equities, asset-backed paper and U.S. government debt, Treasury Department figures show. Tokyo’s total holdings of all types of U.S. securities grew to $1.84 trillion ...
The unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent in January from a revised 4.3 percent in December for the first improvement in three months as more women found jobs, government data showed Friday. But an official in the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said the ...
Two U.S. sailors were given prison terms of nine and 10 years on Friday for raping and injuring a Japanese woman in her 20s in Okinawa in October. A panel of three professional and six lay judges at the Naha District Court handed a ...
Shiseido Co., the nation’s largest maker of cosmetics, will abolish animal testing for products to be developed from April at both domestic and overseas laboratories, as alternative methods have been established. In a news release, the company said the decision was made at meeting ...
As the world rushed to condemn North Korea for its nuclear test, the political shock waves rippled into the daily lives of ethnic Korean children living in Japan. Amid the clamor for an effective way to punish a Pyongyang leadership that has proved immune ...
A 17-year-old Romanian in custody admitted Friday that he was involved in the robbery-slaying of a woman on a street in Tokyo’s Kichijoji area and was promptly served an arrest warrant for the crime, police said, adding they are also looking for his 18-year-old ...
A New York Police Department patrol car responding to an emergency call struck and killed a 24 year-old Japanese man in Queens shortly after midnight Feb. 21, the victim’s family said. According to a personal briefing from the police, Ryo Oyamada from Kagawa Prefecture ...
Regional legal affairs bureaus responded to a record 3,988 school bullying cases last year, up 20.6 percent from 2011, the Justice Ministry announced Friday. The findings come amid heightened attention on the issue following the 2011 suicide of a junior high school student who ...
The Cabinet approved a bill Friday that would introduce a numbering system giving everyone integrated access to their own tax, pension and medical benefit data. The “my number” bill has won the backing of the Democratic Party of Japan as well as the Liberal ...
Narita International Airport Corp. will lower landing fees in April for international airlines that launch new routes or additional flights. The reduced fees will apply to airlines that have more cumulative landing weight in a half-year period than in the corresponding period in the ...
The Independence Hall of Korea started holding classes Thursday to teach about a pair of South Korean-held islets at the heart of a bitter sovereignty row with Japan. Some 3,000 people, including elementary school students, their family members and tourists, are expected to attend ...
Japan will help Myanmar develop a system to increase intellectual property protection, officials said Thursday. Under a new agreement, the Japan Patent Office will offer advice and expertise to Myanmar to help it create the necessary laws for enhancing intellectual property protection, the officials ...
As economic policy goes, experts say, the automatic spending cuts slated to begin Friday won’t leave a deep scar on the U.S. economy, which is otherwise looking pretty good. They are a fiscal speed bump on the road to economic recovery, which is why ...
In a stunning reversal, U.N. appeals judges Thursday acquitted the former chief of the Yugoslav National Army of aiding and abetting atrocities by rebel Serbs, including the Srebrenica massacre, by providing them with military aid during the Balkan wars. Gen. Momcilo Perisic, a former ...
Anyone who has spent any time in a courtroom knows how easy it is for a skilled defense lawyer to plant doubt in the mind of a jury. Even in a relatively straightforward case, such as a hit and run, jurors are frequently presented ...
The United States on Friday won a court appeal in its battle to extradite Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom from New Zealand. A New Zealand appeals court overturned an earlier ruling that would have allowed Dotcom broad access to evidence in the case against him ...
Former NBA superstar Dennis Rodman hung out with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his improbable visit to Pyongyang, watching the Harlem Globetrotters together and later drinking and dining on sushi with him. “You have a friend for life,” Rodman told Kim before ...
A new global campaign to persuade nations to ban “killer robots” before they reach the production stage is to be launched in the United Kingdom by a group of academics, pressure groups and Nobel peace prize laureates. Robot warfare and autonomous weapons, the next ...
Charity noh plays will be performed in Kyoto on March 13 to support people affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. The performances will start at 10:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. All of the ¥1,500 admission fee will be donated to organizations helping ...
A soldier pleaded guilty to charges Thursday in connection with the largest leak of classified material in U.S. history and gave his first detailed explanation of his actions. He said he sent the material to WikiLeaks to enlighten the public about Washington’s foreign and ...
Inside the ruins of a market demolished by a powerful bomb, four tiny white candles — dwarfed by the scale of the destruction — flickered gently in the freezing rain as dazed Shiite Muslim Hazaras wept for the nearly 90 people killed in the ...
King Richard I, the 12th-century warrior whose bravery during the Third Crusade gained him the moniker Lionheart, ended up with a heart full of daisies, as well as myrtle, mint and frankincense. Those were among the findings of a French study, announced Thursday, which ...
In the first weeks of 2000 the founders of Napster were in their office above a bank in San Mateo, California, considering dizzying numbers. Figures scrawled on a whiteboard told how many people around the world had installed their file-sharing application and were using ...
NASA probes that are exploring the twin Van Allen radiation belts encircling the Earth have spied a third band of radiation that burst into view and then disappeared, scientists reported Thursday. The discovery of the temporary band of high-energy electrons has stunned scientists and ...
For nearly two weeks, protesters and strikers have shut down much of Egypt’s Port Said, filling the city’s streets with one angry rally after another. At the height of the unrest, they succeeded in closing off the multimillion-dollar Mediterranean port, forcing some ships to ...
China is awash with nondescript new office buildings, so the 12-story tower in Shanghai’s Pudong area hardly looked likely to cause global headlines. Not even propaganda posters on walls surrounding it or People’s Liberation Army guards standing at the gates made the building stand ...
The Los Angeles Clippers took advantage of Roy Hibbert’s suspension Thursday night. Between Blake Griffin’s dunks and Chris Paul’s drives, the Clippers’ stars dominated the middle, forced Indiana into an uncharacteristically sloppy game and beat the Pacers at their own physical game inside, too. ...
Highlighting the top nine finishers from the J. League last season in the second part of this two-day preview.
Like all Chelsea managers, Rafa Benitez was a dead man walking from day one. Of the previous eight during the Abramovich era, only Guus Hiddink wasn’t fired, but the Dutchman was on loan from the Russian Football Federation for three months. Even the trigger-happy ...
Classical Chinese painters were masters of rocky mountains, but Liu Dan, one of a group of contemporary artists putting a new twist on 1,000-year-old tradition, sticks with just the rock. Liu’s minutely detailed “Scholar’s Rock” — a large-scale, almost photographic exploration of a single ...
Creating a “superbrain” of connected minds, scientists Thursday said they had enabled a rat to help a fellow rodent while the animals were a continent apart but connected through brain electrodes. With electrodes imbedded in its cortex, a rat in a research institute in ...
The wins keep coming for the Chicago Blackhawks. Still, goalie Ray Emery is taking a realistic approach to their record-setting start. “I know we’re not going to go unbeaten,” he said. The way the Blackhawks are going, Emery may be selling his team short. ...
As international marriages rose in Japan in recent years, the number of bicultural families increased, and many children of such families are being raised to speak the languages of both parents. American Mary Nobuoka, director of the Bilingual Special Interest Group (B-SIG) and parent ...
Hideki Matsuyama is headed to his first British Open after finishing second in the international qualifying competition Friday. The 21-year-old two-time Asian amateur champion qualified after shooting a 69 in the second round for a two-day total of 135, four shots off the pace ...
Kosuke Kimura, the first Japan-born player in America’s Major League Soccer, will begin his seventh pro season on Sunday as the newest member of a star-studded New York Red Bulls team seeking its first MLS Cup championship. The 28-year-old defender, who was drafted in ...
Australian Open champion Novak Djokovic remained unbeaten this year by routing Andreas Seppi of Italy 6-0, 6-3 as the top four seeds powered into the semifinals of the Dubai Championships on Thursday. Defending champion Roger Federer defeated Nikolay Davydenko 6-2, 6-2. Djokovic will play ...
Levels of carbon dioxide rose hand in hand with warming at the end of the last Ice Age, according to a study that deals a blow to climate skeptics. French researchers said Thursday that they had answered a riddle that has perplexed scientists. The ...
Falling numbers of wild bees and other pollinating insects are hurting global agriculture, a study released Thursday found. Managed populations of pollinators are less effective at fertilizing plants than wild ones, the researchers said, so the dearth of pollinating insects cannot be solved by ...
Taylor Wilson, 18, has designed a compact nuclear reactor that could one day burn waste from old atomic weapons to power anything from homes and factories to space colonies. The American teen, who gained fame four years ago after designing a fusion reactor he ...
The mastermind of Britain’s 1963 Great Train Robbery, Bruce Reynolds, died Thursday at age 81 after a life he said had been cursed by his role in one of the 20th century’s most notorious crimes. Reynolds was the brains in a gang that held ...
Tamagotchi, the electronic pets that were first released by Bandai in Japan in 1996, have returned. But this time in the form of an app in which you can feed, discipline and even play “rock, paper, scissors” with your not-really-there pet. The bonus is ...
I’d lost my keys. Which is unsettling enough. For you do not begin to truly ransack your brain — where in the rising sun could they be? — until you’ve ransacked your house. And I mean ransack. Drawers emptied, floorboards pried, every pocket of ...
In the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately world of pro basketball, Ryuji Kawai’s 60-30 record in 90 games as head coach wasn’t good enough. Nor was the fact that as a rookie head coach he took the Hamamatsu Higashimikawa Phoenix to the bj-league title game last May at ...
The effects of the $85 billion in U.S. government spending cuts that were to kick in Friday will be felt across oceans and could further hurt recession-hit Europe and burden an economically slowing China, shrinking the market for countries that depend on selling things ...
A movie theater in Tokyo will screen a movie with English narration and subtitles Tuesday in which 37 pupils, teachers and parents talk about their experience of the March 2011 quake-tsunami that destroyed Kadonowaki Elementary School in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture. The film, “Living Through ...
In an unusual action that quickly sparked debate online, Chinese authorities showed a live broadcast Friday of four foreign drug smugglers in their last hours before execution for killing 13 fishermen. A shocking and apparently unprecedented form of reality TV for China, the program ...
