Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
National Topics
Science & Health Aug 9, 2013
Kanebo finds 1,641 more skin-whitening cosmetic users with blotches
Kanebo Cosmetics Inc. said Friday it has found another 1,641 people suffering from blotches as a result of its skin-whitening cosmetics. The new cases, discovered during door-to-door visits to consumers complaining of patchy skin whitening after using the products, brings the total number of ...
Science & Health Aug 7, 2013
Hand, foot, mouth disease patients top 130,000 in Japan
Reported cases in Japan of hand, foot and mouth disease, a viral illness commonly found in children, have topped 130,000 since the beginning of the year, the National Institute of Infectious Diseases said Tuesday. According to the institute, 133,802 people had been sickened as ...
Science & Health Aug 7, 2013
Novartis ordered to state skin disorders as Diovan side effects
The health ministry has instructed Novartis Pharma K.K. to state in an attached note for its Diovan blood pressure-lowering drug that the medicine may cause serious skin disorders. Diovan, whose generic name is valsartan, has been cited in a recent suspected case of clinical ...
Science & Health Aug 4, 2013
H-IIB rocket carrying cargo for ISS lifts off from Tanegashima
JAXA launches an H-IIB rocket with a Konotori cargo transporter aboard to resupply the International Space Station.
Science & Health Jul 31, 2013
World's first iPS clinical research for retina regeneration begins
The world’s first clinical research using induced pluripotent stem cells, known as iPS cells, for the regeneration of retina begins Thursday, according to a Japanese team of researchers. The state-backed scientific research institute Riken, based in Wako, Saitama Prefecture, and the Foundation for Biomedical ...
Science & Health Jul 30, 2013
Long-living Japanese society needs better 'quality of death'
by Kanoko Matsuyama
A quarter of a million bedbound elderly people are kept alive in Japan, often for years, by a feeding tube surgically inserted into their stomach. A few months ago, my 96-year-old grandmother became one of them. Feeding tubes are so common in Japan that ...
Science & Health Jul 26, 2013
Mice are given false memories
Sometime soon, a lab mouse could wake up thinking he had snuggled up to a girl mouse the night before. But he did not. The memory is fake. Japanese and American scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have successfully implanted a false memory ...
Science & Health Jul 20, 2013
World's first clinical trials with human iPS cells OK'd
The government has signed off on the world’s first clinical trials to use induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells harvested from the bodies of human patients. Health minister Norihisa Tamura on Friday gave his seal of approval to a proposal by two research institutes that ...
Science & Health Jul 19, 2013
Team identifies obesity-curbing gene, finds mice with low count plump out
An international team said Friday it has identified a gene that plays an important role in curbing obesity. Mice in which the gene was artificially made deficient grew twice as heavy as ordinary mice, according to a report the team of Japanese and non-Japanese ...
Science & Health | NATURAL SELECTIONS Jul 13, 2013
Effects will become more obvious as Japan's climate changes
by Rowan Hooper
Residents of Japan’s big cities, and of Tokyo in particular, are well aware of the heat-island effect — especially now with the onset of summer. The effect occurs because concrete and asphalt retain radiant energy, making the whole city a vast absorber and then ...
Science & Health Jul 12, 2013
Japan health ministry subpanel OKs iPS cell clinical trial
A subcommittee of the health ministry's Health Sciences Council approves plans for what would be the world's first clinical trial using induced pluripotent stem cells.
Science & Health Jul 11, 2013
Complications reported in 15% of sex change operation patients
About 70 percent of 105 Japanese people who had gender reassignment surgeries abroad and in Japan between 1995 and 2012 said they were satisfied with the results, but 15 percent said they had serious complications or they needed another operation after the procedures, a ...