Shimon Sakaguchi, an immunologist and distinguished professor at Osaka University, attends a news conference after winning the 2025 Nobel Prize in medicine, in Osaka Prefecture on Monday.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Oct 7, 2025
Japanese immunologist among three Nobel medicine prize winners
Japanese immunologist Shimon Sakaguchi was awarded the prize along with two other scientists for their discovery concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
Flu season began earlier than usual this year, with Okinawa Prefecture reporting the largest number of cases per hospital in the week up to Sunday.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Oct 3, 2025
Japan enters its second-earliest flu season in 20 years
Okinawa had the most cases on average by prefecture, at 8.98 patients per medical institution, followed by 1.96 for Tokyo, 1.68 for Kagoshima, and Fukuoka with 1.55.
Pedestrians pass through a cooling mist in Tokyo's Ginza district in August.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Oct 2, 2025
Japan saw record number treated for heatstroke in hottest-ever summer
Patients with suspected heatstroke over the period rose almost 3% to 100,143 from a year earlier as Japan saw its temperature record broken twice in a matter of days.
About 83% of public hospitals in Japan were in the red in fiscal 2024.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Sep 30, 2025
83% of public hospitals in Japan in red in fiscal 2024
Both the deficit and the proportion of loss-making hospitals, 703 out of 844, marked record highs.
Japanese researchers estimated that as of 2023, there were 316,900 people in Japan with ulcerative colitis and 95,700 with Crohn’s disease.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Sep 29, 2025
Japan sees 40% surge in chronic bowel disease cases over eight years
On a population basis, a study published this month shows prevalence is now 254.8 cases of ulcerative colitis and 77.0 cases of Crohn’s per 100,000 people.
Study by Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine and House Foods Group has found that the sweet-salty combination dulls the sense of avoiding high salt concentrations and can lead to greater salt intake.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Sep 21, 2025
Sweetness dulls salt aversion and may lead to excessive intake, study shows
The tendency is more pronounced among people with chronic kidney disease, underscoring the need for salt reduction that takes the effect of sweetness into account.
Erectile dysfunction drug Cialis
JAPAN / Science & Health
Sep 19, 2025
Panel OKs first OTC sales of erectile dysfunction drug in Japan
Cialis is set to become the first erectile dysfunction treatment that can be purchased at drugstores in Japan.

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Growing families are being priced out of Tokyo’s condo market, forced to choose between downtown convenience and suburban space.
Is living in central Tokyo still affordable?