Returning travelers swamp airports, highways and train stations as the New Year's holidays begin to wind down.

Just when it was starting to look like 2013 would end with minimal gun violence in Japan, two socially prominent individuals were shot dead in the space of two days.

As with the Yasukuni story, most of the commentary on Okinawa base relocation deal focused on its contentious nature, but also like the Yasukuni story, the main impetus behind the actions reported was economic.

A terrible eruption on Sakurajima, an island in Kagoshima Bay having an active volcano, occurred yesterday at 10 a.m. Up to that time, since the night of the 10th, more than 70 earthquakes had been experienced in Kagoshima. With thundering sounds, the eruption was ...

The government plans to embark on joint development of tank engines with Turkey under arms embargo rules eased in 2011, government sources said Saturday. Turkey is showing interest in engine technology employed in the Ground Self-Defense Force's Type 10 tank, according to the sources. To realize ...

A year ago, we brought you an analysis of the forces that appeared likely to shape the U.S. economy, for better and worse, in 2013. So, what did we get right and what did we get wrong? And of the things we posed as ...

Sitting at a plain white table in a meeting room high up on the 12th floor of a narrow building in central Tokyo, product designer Kenya Hara asks me to picture a shallow plate in my mind. "Now imagine a slightly deeper plate," Hara ...

The guesthouse I was staying at in Kitsuki was named after the owner, a tough but warm-hearted example of Kyushu womanhood, someone who had learnt to stand her own ground on an island known for its almost theatrical levels of machismo.

By the time you read this I should be in the Simien Mountains of northern Ethiopia. I have been asked to go back there to tell the nation's current generation what the forests and wildlife were like in 1967, '68 and '69 when I ...

At the climax of "Shinju"(1994), Laura Joh Rowland's first mystery novel, gallant yoriki (police sergeant) Sano Ichiro rescues the shogun from an assassination plot and earns himself a big promotion. It's a pyrrhic victory leading to what Sano immediately realizes will be a thankless ...

Written in 1906, Natsume Soseki's "Botchan" is based on the author's experience as a teacher in a "barbaric" country town at a time when modern, Western modes of thinking were slowly spreading across Japan from the rapidly modernizing metropolis of Tokyo. The clash between traditional ...

First published in 1949, Yasushi Inoue’s “Bullfight” tells the story of Tsugami, a harried editor-in-chief of a small evening newspaper who agrees to sponsor a bull-fighting contest in Osaka.

Yukichi Fukuzawa, who appears on every Japanese ¥10,000 note, wrote "An Encouragement of Learning" as a collection of essays while completing his masterpiece, "An Outline of a Theory of Civilization" (1875). The essays highlight the basic tenets of his fundamental philosophical beliefs — freedom, ...

Reggie Warren, one of the elite forwards in bj-league history, delivered a gutsy performance in the Rizing Fukuoka's first game of 2014. The University of West Florida product finished with 19 points, 19 rebounds and three assists in the Rizing's 80-77 triumph over the visiting ...

Former UConn player Gavin Edwards and NBL rookie Makoto Hiejima scored 22 points apiece to help the Aisin SeaHorses advance to the semifinals of the 89th All-Japan Championship with a 96-79 win over the Tsukuba Robots on Saturday. Edwards, a 207-cm player, had a game-best ...

Reigning Olympic champion Kim Yu-na fired a warning shot to her rivals after producing a nearly flawless performance in the women's short program at South Korea's national championships on Saturday. The 23-year-old Kim topped the leaderboard with an eye-popping score of 80.60 points at the ...

Tokyo Yakult Swallows hurler Yasuhiro "Ryan" Ogawa, the Central League's 2013 Rookie of the Year, kick-started training for the upcoming season with some sprints and a game of catch on Saturday. Ogawa, who went 16-4 to lead the CL in wins, paid a visit to ...

Yokozuna Hakuho got back into the trenches Saturday, kicking off his training for the upcoming New Year Grand Sumo Tournament following a relaxing vacation in Okinawa. Donning a brand-new, sparkling white training mawashi, Hakuho, who enters his eighth year at sumo's highest rank, held sparring ...

Happy New Year, and a reminder as we are in 2014, it was 10 years ago when Japanese baseball went into a crisis. There was a threat of contraction to 10 or even eight teams and a long hot summer of uncertainty as team ...