The Japanese government plans to reach out to North Korean officials next week in Mongolia to propose a summit between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the North's leader Kim Jong Un, government sources said Wednesday. Abe has said he is willing to meet Kim "without ...

Even before a knife-wielding man attacked a group of elementary school students in Kawasaki on Tuesday, Japan had already seen news of children dragged into dreadful circumstances this year. Earlier this month, a vehicle plowed into a group of toddlers on a sidewalk in Shiga ...

The Diet passed into law Tuesday a bill allowing drivers to use their smartphones while their cars are traveling autonomously under certain circumstances and if they are able to shift to manual driving immediately during an emergency. The bill to amend the road traffic law, ...

As the world watches to see if Huawei survives the ongoing turmoil stemming from the U.S.-China trade war, its wider effects could impact Japanese suppliers.

The government ordered Nomura Holdings Inc. and its core securities unit Tuesday to improve business management compliance after the company admitted last week that insufficient internal controls led to the leakage of confidential information about the Tokyo Stock Exchange's new section plan to clients. The ...

Coverage for genomic testing starting Saturday will be applied to those who don’t respond to conventional treatments, with patients only paying 10 to 30 percent of the fees.

Pokemon Co., partly owned by Nintendo Co., unveiled several new initiatives at an event in Tokyo, including a game inspired by the "Detective Pikachu" film for the Switch console and a new device for tracking sleep. The Detective Pikachu title aims to cash in on ...

U.S. companies counting on China for a major part of their growth have targets on their backs as Beijing and Washington ratchet up trade-war tensions. President Donald Trump's decision to blacklist Huawei Technologies Co., the Chinese maker of smartphones, while also threatening bans on other ...

The Diet on Wednesday authorized public broadcaster NHK to start simultaneous online streaming of its television programs amid the increasing popularity of computer- and handset-based services. NHK, formally called Japan Broadcasting Corp., plans to launch the new service by next March in order to broadcast ...

Wielding knives in both hands, Ryuichi Iwasaki, 51, allegedly carried out the attack in Kawasaki before taking his own life with a self-inflicted stab wound, police said.

The first civil trial that could hold a drug company responsible for the U.S. opioid epidemic began Tuesday in Oklahoma — a case that could affect thousands of others like it. The trial pits the state against Johnson & Johnson. Two other drug companies named ...

Renault SA officials Wednesday sought to reassure the firm's alliance partner Nissan Motor Co. over a possible tie-up between the French automaker and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV, which could upend the auto industry. Renault and Nissan representatives met outside Tokyo on Wednesday along with officials ...

The Diet revised various pieces of legislation in an effort to bolster measures against workplace harassment, obligating companies to combat increasingly prevalent reports of bullying and abuse of power.

Less than three months after winning the 2019 Japan Times Bee, Ariya Narayanasamy spelled himself into the next round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Tuesday. The 12-year-old from Tokyo correctly spelled "bandicoot" and will compete in round three on Wednesday. Hosted in National Harbor ...

Some Hong Kong judges fear they are being put on a collision course with Beijing as the special administrative region's government pushes for sweeping legal changes that would for the first time allow fugitives captured in Hong Kong to be sent to mainland China ...

Hanako Kuribayashi was known as being a thoughtful and good-natured girl, while Satoshi Oyama was recognized as a specialist in the Burmese language and a highly qualified Foreign Ministry official, before they were killed in Tuesday's mass stabbing in Kawasaki. The two fell victim when ...

A 45-year-old man was arrested Wednesday for the alleged use of a shock collar to discipline his three children, police said, the latest in a series of child abuse cases that have prompted legislators to seek a ban on corporal punishment. Takahiro Goto in the ...

Leopalace21 Corp.'s outgoing president, Eisei Miyama, will not remain as a director and will step down en mass with six other inside directors on the apartment rental firm's board, according to sources. Bunya Miyao, the managing executive officer of the company, will succeed him as ...

Police are stepping up cyberpatrols in cooperation with companies and nonprofit organizations to crack down on the increasing amount of information online that encourages people to kill themselves. In 2017, the dismembered bodies of one man and eight women, aged between 15 and 26, were ...

Papua New Guinea's veteran prime minister formally resigned on Wednesday, easing a political crisis but calling a multibillion-dollar French and U.S.-backed gas deal into doubt. Facing a vote of no confidence he looked sure to lose, Peter O'Neill told parliament that he had tendered his ...

The memories of Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda remain alive on the Philippine island of Lubang, southwest of Manila, 45 years after his surrender. Onoda, an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer deployed to the island from December 1944 to lead guerrilla warfare at the height of ...

Nobel Prize winner Koichi Tanaka says the predictive blood test for Alzheimer's disease he and colleagues spent almost a decade developing is a double-edged sword. Without medications to stave off the memory-robbing condition, identifying those at risk will do nothing to ease the dementia burden ...

It looked like a scene from a sci-fi blockbuster: An astronomer in the Netherlands captured footage of a train of brightly lit SpaceX satellites ascending through the night sky last week, stunning space enthusiasts across the globe. But the sight has also provoked an outcry ...

Politically appointed U.S. environmental officials last year overruled concerns of career scientists about air pollution in a Wisconsin county where U.S. President Donald Trump has pushed for a factory to be built by Foxconn Technology Co., newly released internal emails show. Trump has been ...

Washington's trade war with Beijing puts it at risk of losing access to China-produced rare earths, which are critical to manufacturing, a commentary in state media said on Wednesday. The commentary follows President Xi Jinping's visit last week to a Chinese rare earths company — ...

North Korea's "entire" weapons of mass destruction program violates U.N. Security Council resolutions, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman said on Tuesday, when asked about recent missile launches by Pyongyang. "I think the entire North Korean WMD program, it's in conflict with the U.N. Security Council ...

A French rights group sought on Tuesday to block the loading of what it said were munitions onto a Saudi Arabian ship docked in southern France, as pressure mounts on Paris to stop military sales to the kingdom. ACAT said in a statement it had ...

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Tuesday he would fight to save jobs at a General Electric Co. (GE) factory in eastern France where more than 1,000 posts are threatened. GE earlier on Tuesday said it was considering ways to cut costs and ...

History shows that trade sanctions and military tensions are a combustible combination.

Mitsuko Amano was born in year 19 of the Showa Era (1944). World War II was still a year away from ending, and at the time nearly 2,000 people made their living on Shiraishi (White Stone) Island, the place she called home in the ...

As a concept, "if" may be mere conjecture in real life. In fact, though, if Stuart Sutcliffe hadn't taken his best friend John Lennon's advice back in 1960 and left art school to play bass guitar in his band, the music world would now ...

Japanese films about dementia are by now many and, given demographic trends here, interest in the subject is both natural and necessary. But as seen in "A Long Goodbye," Ryota Nakano's drama about a family dealing with the dementia of its once-proud patriarch, dementia has ...

Last month, Japan lost a cultural giant. April 11 saw the passing of Kazuhiko Kato — better known by the pen name Monkey Punch — the creator of "Lupin the Third." The manga, about a playboy thief descended from fictional French gentleman thief Arsene ...

Go Kamamoto drove in the tiebreaking run in the fourth inning as the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks moved back to the top of the Pacific League standings with a 5-2 victory over the Orix Buffaloes on Wednesday. Kotaro Otake (2-2) got the win at Kyocera Dome ...

With the 100-day-to-go milestone fast approaching, two well-known British rugby stars have said they think Japan will be one of the teams to watch out for at this year's Rugby World Cup. Welshman Sam Warburton, who led his side to the semifinals at the 2011 ...

U.S. President Donald Trump's attendance at the Summer Grand Sumo Tournament, and presentation of a large trophy to its winner, made headlines around the globe. The attention of the world's media, for a few hours at least, was focused on Japan's national sport. Although massively disruptive ...

When Liverpool and Tottenham enter the Wanda Metropolitano Stadium pitch on Saturday night for the UEFA Champions League final, the 67,000 fans in Madrid won't be the only ones rapt with anticipation. Nearly 10,000 km away, Japanese supporters of the two English Premier League clubs ...

The extended 12-hour window for Japanese residents to enter the 2020 Tokyo Olympic ticket lottery closed at 11:59 a.m. on Wednesday after organizers allowed people some extra time to apply. Applications opened to Japanese residents on May 9 and had been scheduled to close at ...