A government panel says that 8.1 percent of around 100,000 junior high and high school students polled nationwide are suspected of being “Internet addicts.”

Child consultation centers dealt with 66,807 child abuse cases in fiscal 2012, exceeding 60,000 for the first time since the tally started in fiscal 1990.

Japan should work to increase employment opportunities for women as it’s working-age population dwindles, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reiterated. In the Employment Outlook 2013 report released Tuesday, the OECD said the average jobless rate among its 34 member nations stood at ...

Calls in the Diet for legislation to curb hate speech targeting foreign residents of Japan are being made even as the issue barely registers on the campaign trail for the July 21 Upper House poll.

Japan needs to empower females in the workplace and promote male participation in child-rearing in order to address its falling birthrate, the head of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said. “If they (women), for instance, leave to go and have a baby, they ...

The number of suicides across the nation from January to June fell slightly to 14,192, the National Police Agency said in a preliminary report Tuesday. The figure was 102 fewer than in the first half of 2012, when the annual number of suicides fell ...

A working group from an industry ministry panel has decided to set up a forum for discussing issues related to the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The new forum will be composed of Cabinet ministers and local government leaders, according to the plan revealed ...

The number of elderly households marked a record high of 10,241,000 in 2012, a government survey showed Thursday, another sign of the graying of Japanese society. The figure accounted for 21.3 percent of households in Japan, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. ...

A Thai woman who spent several months in Japan as a sex slave in the early 2000s said in a recent interview she fears visa-free entry for short-term Thai tourists to Japan could be a double-edged sword. The woman, who declined to be named, ...

Yamagata Prefecture has turned down a request from anti-Korean activists to use a public building for a meeting. The prefectural government said it “made the decision from a comprehensive standpoint based on administrative requirements for the facility and (the group) was not turned down ...

Nearly 20 percent of male employees in their 30s work more than 60 hours a week, making it difficult for them to participate in raising children, a 2013 government white paper on dealing with the low birthrate shows.