Mizuho Fukushima, leader of the Social Democratic Party, has long been active in dealing with humanitarian and women’s issues, ranging from sexual harassment to domestic violence to foreigners’ rights. Born in Miyazaki Prefecture in 1955, she graduated from the University of Tokyo’s law department, ...

A man’s life alone cannot represent the Showa Era in its entirety, but Susumu Iida’s serves to underscore many of its harsh legacies. Iida, 86, lived through the hell of the Pacific War, saw his fellow soldiers starve in New Guinea and spent almost ...

In the 1990s, few Japanese associated the term “coaching” with instructing and directing people toward achieving their goals in business. But the concept has quickly gained ground in the past decade, becoming a tool for human resources development in many companies. Yoshiyuki Suzuki, president ...

Since its founding, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) has been the nation’s most powerful business lobby and its head is often called “the prime minister of the business world.” For most of the postwar period, the organization has represented the voice of big ...

Massive layoffs from the current economic crisis are falling heavily on foreign workers, many of whom are opting to leave the country to seek work back home. But for those who stay, there remain the difficulties of adapting to Japanese society, limited educational opportunities ...

After training under a dyer for six months in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, art student Satoko Yamagishi decided she needed a break. In October 1998 she went to Montreal, where she met Philippe Lavoie, a Canadian computer chip designer studying Japanese. One day in March ...

Daigo Sato, the man who founded the NPO that set up Japan’s first political internship program, Dot-JP, 10 years ago, has embarked on a new mission this year to help the nonprofit organizations themselves. In May, Sato established Charity Platform, the first NPO in ...

Japan will continue to be a friend of the United States, but incoming President Barack Obama may try to approach China more to solve international issues because Beijing can more quickly effect policy, according to a noted American expert on Japan and China. “It’ll ...

A defunct 100-year-old elementary school in Tokyo that boasted 1,000 pupils in its heyday has been reborn as a museum that hopes to revive the passion of playing with toys that don’t require batteries. Yotsuya No. 4 Elementary School in Shinjuku Ward was forced ...

Helping those suffering from poverty and disasters is as easy as buying a book, say supporters of a new charity program launched Thursday. In agreement with their publishers and a nongovernmental organization, writers behind Chabo! (Charity Book Program) are giving away some of their ...

Twelfth in a series Tenkoko Sonoda recalls that when the war ended on Aug. 15, 1945, she was left with an unanswered question: Why had she survived when so many of her close friends and neighbors had died? Three times during the war she ...