Two men were seriously injured early Monday at a members-only gambling venue in the city of Osaka's Minami entertainment district, police said. A suspect, thought to be a man in his 30s, left behind a revolver while fleeing the casino-style online gambling hub, the police ...

A project team of Komeito, the junior partner in the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition, has presented to Foreign Minister Taro Kono its proposals for an international agreement to regulate robotic weapons development. Deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems, or LAWS, cannot be overlooked in ...

The U.S. ambassador for religious freedom again urged China on Monday to give its people religious freedom, a move he said could help gain trust from self-ruled Taiwan, an island China considers its own. Sam Brownback said in a speech Friday in Hong Kong that ...

After a frantic scramble, local political and business leaders remain concerned about who will support him.

The venture, set up in 2002, had become nonfunctional in recent years.

This is the last in a five-part series examining how the northeast and the nation are progressing with efforts to deal with the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis. Even after the Fukushima No. 1 crisis in March 2011 forced Japan to rethink its ...

Japan Tobacco Inc.'s Canadian unit was granted creditor protection by the Ontario Superior Court after a legal defeat over the risks of smoking threatens the existence of tobacco companies in the country. The court extended protection in favor of JTI-Macdonald Corp. after the company argued ...

Over the past few decades, towns, cities and prefectures throughout Japan have been churning out mascots to represent and promote themselves, resulting in an annual contest, the Yuru-kyara Grand Prix, that has come to symbolize their popularity. But last year's contest in Osaka in November ...

A team of lawyers representing South Korean plaintiffs who won a case against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. over wartime forced labor is considering seeking a seizure of the Japanese manufacturer's assets in Europe, one of them has said. The lawyers last week filed a request ...

Four people were found dead after a fire gutted a farmer's house Monday in Aomori Prefecture, police and firefighters said. The fire broke out at the wooden two-story home of Mitsuhiro Yashiro, 77, in Hirosaki at around midnight. The blaze was put out six hours ...

A Tokyo court on Monday denied ousted Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn's request to attend a board meeting this week, blocking what would have been a dramatic faceoff with the colleagues he has accused of fomenting a coup. Ghosn, released last week on a $9 million ...

Japan pauses at 2:46 p.m. to observe a moment of silence and reflect on all that has happened since that fateful day.

The winning word was "forbearance," meaning "patience," and Ariya Narayanasamy may be representative of the word — going through more than two dozen rounds of unceasing demands to spell sometimes arcane words accurately and pick correct definitions without making a single mistake. Narayanasamy, a seventh-grade ...

Despite the passage of time, their stories are still heart-wrenching.

The prenuptial agreement, an age-old practice fairly common in many Western countries, is gaining a foothold in Japan as more and more people insist on drawing one up to ensure they will be protected if their marriage ends badly. In Japan, formalizing the do's and ...

The Justice Ministry plans to require foreign workers entering the country using new working visas to submit medical certificates, sources with knowledge of the matter have said. Such foreign workers will be required to receive confirmation by doctors that they are capable of working in ...

A man was arrested Sunday after a local assembly member in Chiba Prefecture was found to have been stabbed to death at his condominium. Norihisa Ishikawa, a 71-year-old assembly member of the city of Kisarazu, was found by his wife lying face down in the ...

Japan Inc. is pushing back after years of pressure to give bigger pay raises that has been a key part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's campaign to restore stable economic growth. While wages have never reached the level sought by Abe, the results from annual ...

China's aviation regulator said Monday it had ordered Chinese airlines to suspend their Boeing Co. 737 Max aircraft operations by 6 p.m. following a deadly crash of a 737 Max 8 operated by Ethiopian Airlines. An Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max 8 bound for Nairobi crashed ...

It would be a mistake for special counsel Robert Mueller not to subpoena President Donald Trump to appear before a grand jury in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff. Mueller is constrained by time pressure ...

Italy wants to join China's giant "Belt and Road" infrastructure plan to boost Italian exports, not to strengthen political ties with the Asian giant, Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio said on Sunday. Di Maio was responding to U.S. concerns at the prospect of a ...

The Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy is now the official policy of Japan and the United States, but few people understand what it comprises.

Japan still has the right to organize, and unions are good both for members and management.

If you turn an 'H' on its side, you get something that looks like the kanji kō or ku, and from there you can go all sorts of places.

You might be surprised how often you will use the Japanese expressions for 'carelessness' and 'without intention' once you've learned them

Following China implementing a restriction on the import of plastic waste, Japan has looked to Southeast Asia as a possible destination for its plastic rubbish.

Mohammed Khalfan Al-Romaithi, a candidate for the Asian Football Confederation presidency, said Monday he supports an expanded 48-team field for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Speaking to Kyodo News in Tokyo, Al-Romaithi of the United Arab Emirates said that if he wins the April ...

Four-time Olympic wrestling champion Kaori Icho will represent Japan at April's Asian Championships in her first international competition since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, the Japan Wrestling Federation said Monday. Icho, who is aiming to win her fifth straight Olympic gold medal at the ...

The Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles donated 1,000 seats on Monday from their home stadium to a local ballpark in Miyagi Prefecture in northeastern Japan, an area hit by the devastating earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Eagles president Yozo Tachibana presented the seats from Rakuten Seimei ...

Masataka Yoshida's grand slam led the way as Japan beat Mexico 6-0 on Sunday and earn a split in their two-game series. A day after a 4-2 loss in which he drove in Japan's first run and scored the other, Yoshida again was Japan's batting ...

When many people think of sumo, they imagine two large men locked in a vice-like grip straining to force each other out of a ring. The common English-language naming of the sport as "sumo wrestling" also reinforces that grappling image. Go to almost any stable and ...

Yokozuna Hakuho survived a scare against Endo on Monday and celebrated a win on his 34th birthday on the second day of the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament. In the day's penultimate bout at Edion Arena Osaka, top-ranked maegashira Endo (0-2) had Hakuho on the ropes, ...

Japanese midfielder Shinji Kagawa scored the winner in Besiktas' 3-2 victory over Konyaspor in the Turkish first division on Sunday. After coming off the bench in the 75th minute at Vodafone Park, Kagawa found the ball three minutes into stoppage time thanks to a turnover ...

Miho Takagi ended the 2018-2019 World Cup in style on Sunday, setting a world record on her way to winning the competition's final 1,500-meter race of the season. Takagi clocked 1 minute, 49.83 seconds to claim the World Cup Final victory on the Utah Olympic ...

World No. 1 Kento Momota on Sunday became the first Japanese man to win the All England Open badminton championships when he beat Denmark's Viktor Axelsen 2-1 in the men's singles final. Momota, the reigning world champion and Asian champion, was stretched to three games ...

Ryoyu Kobayashi made history on Sunday by becoming the first non-European to win the men's ski jumping World Cup overall title. Kobayashi finished fifth in the large hill event in Oslo, but nevertheless built an unassailable lead — 500 points over second-place Kamil Stoch of ...