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 ...
The Environment Ministry on Friday designated the Japanese eel as a species at risk of extinction on its red list of endangered freshwater and brackish water fish, although the move is not legally binding. “This does not mean people will become unable to eat ...
Ten endangered Borneo pygmy elephants have been found dead in a Malaysian forest, and officials say they were likely poisoned. The elephant carcasses were found near each other over the past three weeks at the Gunung Rara Forest Reserve, Laurentius Ambu, director of the ...
Antiwhaling activist group Sea Shepherd said Wednesday it had intercepted the Japanese fleet in its annual Southern Ocean hunt “before a single harpoon has been fired.” Sea Shepherd claims to have saved the lives of 4,000 whales over the past eight whaling seasons with ...
Extremely high pollution levels shrouded eastern China for the second time in about two weeks Tuesday, forcing airlines in Beijing and elsewhere to cancel flights because of poor visibility and prompting government warnings for residents to stay indoors. The outlines of buildings in the ...
Claims that global warming can be braked by dissolving huge quantities of rock in the sea to absorb carbon emissions are laden with flaws, a study argues. The analysis is the latest scientific appraisal into geo-engineering, or techniques that are being promoted as quick ...
Perhaps it was due to the fever of impending flu, or the arctic winds rattling our Tokyo home, but recent media photos of Beijing’s thick smog suddenly brought to mind thoughts of the late U.S. president, John F. Kennedy. On June 26, 1963, Kennedy ...
American biologist Kelly Swing thwacks a bush with his butterfly net and a dozen or so bugs and insects drop in. One is a harvester, or daddy-long-legs, another a jumping spider that leaps onto a leaf where two beetles are mating. This is the ...
Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused Mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy. ...
Fears that most of the Earth’s species will become extinct before they have even been discovered by science are “alarmist,” according to an international study released Friday. Researchers set out to examine estimates that there were 100 million species worldwide and they are dying ...
It was a professional hit, the quick and ruthless slaying of a family of 12. Poachers with machetes hacked off the tusks of 11 African elephants on Jan. 5 in a Kenyan reserve, passing over a baby that was crushed by its mother after ...
A ripple flows gently inland across an expanse of dark-gray mud. It washes in, then drains back, dampening the surface; it briefly fills, then empties from, tiny holes made by innumerable small crabs. The ebb is over, and the flow tide has begun. The ...
Up on the roof of professor Fritz Vollrath’s lab in the zoology department at Oxford University, there is a makeshift greenhouse in which he nurtures his favorite golden orb web spiders. Walking into the greenhouse is a little like finding yourself inside one of ...
