New car sales in the 2018 business year rose 1.2 percent from the previous year to 5.26 million units, increasing for the third consecutive year on strong minicar sales. The positive figures for the year ended Sunday came despite headwinds for the industry following a ...

Some citizens in Beijing on Monday evaluated Japan's new era name, Reiwa, as "strange" and expressed disappointment, saying it doesn't make sense in their language and was not derived from Chinese classics. On Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter, many young people had tried to guess ...

In a much-awaited moment that heralded the approach of a new chapter in Japan's history, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced Monday that the new Imperial era will be named Reiwa, in one of the final steps toward initiating the nation's first Imperial succession ...

“It was unexpected, but I’m especially happy that they used ‘wa’ in the name,” says an Osaka shopkeeper.

Business confidence turns sour on slowdowns in overseas economies.

This year's recruits went to work at their new jobs for the first time Monday, the start of fiscal 2019 and the beginning of stricter overtime restrictions. "I would like (this ministry) to lead Japan's social security and working style," Health, Labor and Welfare Minister ...

In modern Japan, every emperor's era has its own name — appearing in places such as coins, official paperwork and newspapers — and with a rare abdication coming at the end of April, there was much speculation about what the new gengō would be. On ...

When Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga unveiled that Reiwa would be the name of Japan's next Imperial era on Monday, it was a moment that finally put an end to months of fierce media competition to get the scoop before the official announcement. The name ...

Taiwan has protested what it called a "reckless" and "provocative" flight by two Chinese fighter jets across the so-called median line of the Taiwan Strait, the country said late Sunday. "At 11 a.m., March 31, 2 PLAAF J-11 jets violated the long-held tacit agreement by ...

Display panel maker Japan Display Inc., a key supplier of Apple Inc., said Monday it is aiming to agree this week on a bailout of more than ¥110 billion ($989 million) from a group of Chinese and Taiwanese companies and an investment fund backed ...

Last September, two months before his arrest in Tokyo, then-Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn and the carmaker's chief executive officer considered bringing in a new partner for the alliance with Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., according to an email. At the time, Ghosn ...

Lawson Inc. will introduce self-checkout systems in all 14,000 of its convenience stores by October to cope with Japan's chronic labor shortage and ease the burden on existing employees, company sources said Monday. Customers across the nation will process their purchases by scanning barcodes themselves ...

Some 200 Chinese ships have been spotted near the Philippine-occupied Thitu Island in the South China Sea since the start of the year, triggering alarm in the Philippine military. Philippine soldiers will continue their patrols in the disputed area, military chief Gen. Benjamin Madrigal Jr. ...

Twitter erupted in a flood of posts Monday morning as the Japanese government revealed the country's new era name, Reiwa 令和, which is set to go into effect starting May 1. Keywords and hashtags related to the revelation captured most of the top trending ...

The new head of the nation's main banking lobby is warning the Bank of Japan against deepening negative interest rates, signaling that such a move could spur risky investment and put further pressure on lenders' profits. "It will be a quite difficult option to take," ...

Outside the French Mediterranean port of Marseille, at Fos-sur-Mer, one of the largest industrial and port zones in Europe has been spewing a noxious cocktail of fumes for years. And few residents think EU pledges to clean up the continent will make a difference ...

A ceremony to welcome home a fleet of whaling ships, including the 8,145-ton Nisshin Maru, from the Antarctic Ocean took place in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, on Sunday. The return brings an end to Japan's whaling in the Antarctic Ocean for scientific research, which started in ...

Seoul began a unilateral effort to excavate Korean War remains along the border Monday as silence from Pyongyang stymied a previously agreed joint operation with the North. The joint excavation along the Demilitarized Zone of remains from the 1950-53 conflict was part of a military ...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suffered a severe setback as his ruling AK Party lost control of the capital, Ankara, for the first time in a local election and he appeared to concede defeat in the country's largest city, Istanbul. Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish ...

As billions of people in Asia choke under polluted skies, authorities have turned to water-dispersing drones and outdoor air purifiers to improve air quality, while companies have tried to cash in by selling everything from canned air to lung-purifying teas. Around 92 percent of the ...

With the Olympics — and an anticipated influx of even more foreign tourists — a little more than a year away, local companies are finding more ways to get in on the act of showcasing Japanese know-how and enhancing the overall experience of visitors. Take ...

China's State Council said on Sunday that the country would continue to suspend additional tariffs on U.S. vehicles and auto parts after April 1, in a goodwill gesture following a U.S. decision to delay tariff hikes on Chinese imports. In December, China said it would ...

British pop legend Elton John has joined actor George Clooney in calling for a boycott of nine Brunei-owned hotels over the sultanate's new death-penalty laws for gay sex and adultery. The call came as a growing list of politicians and celebrities added their names to ...

Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn issued a rare rebuke of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra about a week after an inconclusive national election, making it more likely that a pro-military party would form a government. The monarch revoked royal decorations given to Thaksin because he fled ...

A South Carolina man has been charged in the murder of a University of South Carolina student who may have gotten into her killer's car mistakenly believing that it was her Uber ride, police said. Nathaniel Rowland, 24, was charged with the murder and kidnapping ...

The Trump administration on Sunday doubled down on its threat to shut down the southern border with Mexico, a day after it cut aid to Central American countries which President Donald Trump accused of deliberately sending migrants to the United States. Faced with a surge ...

A labor reform law came into force on Monday, setting a legal cap on long work hours to change Japan's notorious overwork culture blamed for causing sickness and deaths. The cap, which only targets major companies for now, is one of the three pillars of ...

Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., the world's third-biggest steelmaker, changed its name to Nippon Steel Corp. on Monday to start afresh with an "inclusive" trade name as it aims to further expand overseas operations. Japan's largest steelmaker was created through the merger of Nippon ...

Scientists in the U.S. say they have discovered the fossilized remains of a mass of creatures that died minutes after a huge asteroid slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago, sealing the fate of the dinosaurs. In a paper to be published Monday, a ...

Idemitsu Kosan Co., Japan's second-largest oil wholesaler, and fourth-ranked Showa Shell Sekiyu K.K. merged Monday, creating a new oil giant to better compete in increasingly challenging market conditions amid falling demand for gasoline. The new company, with combined sales of over ¥5 trillion, is set ...

The Reiwa Era is poised to become a great one for Japan.

Tokyo needs a strategic thinker/planner like the late Andrew W. Marshall and politicians who listen to his or her analyses.

The particles まで and さえ both emphasize degree, the former expressing the limits of time, space, quantity and so on. By attaching it to a noun (X), the construction Xまで can translate to “until X”

Baseball star Ichiro Suzuki's retirement announcement on March 21 shocked fans and friends across the country, who say they admire his achievements.

In the beginning there was the word. More precisely, the prefix. When the Heisei Era officially started, on Jan. 8, 1989, Japan's economy was still merrily bubbling along. That must have been one reason for the popularity of 超 (chō, hyper-). The prefix itself ...

Simona Halep cut the gap with world No.1 Naomi Osaka in the WTA rankings on Monday after the Romanian made the semi-finals at the Miami Open last week. French Open champion Halep, who last held the top spot in January, would have returned to the ...

It was only one event. And there was no guarantee of continued success for a long time into the future. Even so, ONE Championship's first-ever event in Japan managed to instill confidence that the organization is on the right path for further success in the ...