Former health minister Yoichi Ma­su­zoe indicates he will run for Tokyo governor next month.

About 4,000 police officers continue the hunt for an alleged rapist who escaped from the prosecutor’s office in Kawasaki.

Ten people were injured Wednesday morning at a train station in Kawasaki when an up escalator suddenly came to a stop, police and firefighters said. A man described as being 39 years old sustained a broken leg when the accident took place at Musashikosugi Station ...

Takajin Yashiki, a popular TV celebrity and singer well known in the Kansai region, has died, according to a TV station official and other sources. He was 64. The city of Osaka native died Friday, they said. He had been battling esophageal cancer for the ...

Sony Corp. will start distributing games for the PlayStation 4 via cloud computing technology this year, President Kazuo Hirai said Tuesday, revealing the electronics company's focus on the entertainment business. In his speech on the opening day of the 2014 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) ...

Farmers on Japan's west coast will sow Nihonbare rice this year for the first time in a decade as growers around the country return to older varieties to meet demand for record sake exports. Overseas shipments of sake reached an all-time high of ¥8.5 billion ...

Lixil Group Corp., which agreed to buy bathroom-fixture makers American Standard Brands and Grohe Group last year, is studying another overseas acquisition to boost revenue from emerging markets. The planned deal will help Tokyo-based Lixil achieve its target of increasing sales from emerging markets to ...

Sitting in a dimly lit room at a training school for juvenile delinquents in Tokyo, an 18-year-old Brazilian-Japanese boy reflects on his misdeeds. Though he ended up at the reformatory about a year ago for groping a woman, the deeper story of his detention can ...

First of all, I would like to wish a happy new year to all the readers of Labor Pains. While labor news has generally been a gloomy topic of late, it is my hope that this year will bring brighter things for me to ...

I can't really say that things have improved for the country as I don't often have the chance to follow politics. But, based on what I feel about my family, things have improved in the last year. I'm not sure if it's because of ...

A15-minute drive from Niigata Station, just across the mighty Shinano River pouring into the sea from the Northern Alps, a massive oval-shaped hall sits amid rich green parkland. This is Niigata City Performing Arts Center, aka Ryutopia — the nation's only public theater with ...

The audience bursts into applause and a green-, black- and terracotta-striped curtain called the joshiki-maku comes down on a sparkling kabuki performance; rather, it's rapidly pulled across from stage left to right. But as everyone knows, it's not time to leave the auditorium, as ...

In the last three months since I arrived in New York to study American drama with a grant from the Asian Cultural Council, a U.S. nonprofit dedicated to international cultural exchange, I have been to the theater more than 70 times — including at ...

A wall of 450 flip-clocks all display 15:26 in the entryway to "Second Thoughts" at Contemporary Art Gallery, Art Tower Mito. Seconds pass ... CLICK, all synchronized to the minute. The sound of 15:27 is so overwhelming it's surprising to see only ...

Art can sometimes play a balancing or compensatory role in society, giving voice to neglected or superseded aspects of a culture. For example, the neo-feudalist ethos of Pre-Raphaelitism and the pastoralism of Impressionism developed against a backdrop of increasing urbanization and materialism. This can ...

Keisuke Honda has waited a long time to get his shot with one of Europe's biggest clubs, but his patience should stand him in good stead as he begins life with Italian giants AC Milan this week. Honda was set to be unveiled by the ...