Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc. will decommission the Fukushima No. 2 nuclear plant, its president, Tomoaki Kobayakawa, told Fukushima Gov. Masao Ochibori at a meeting Wednesday. The facility is the second nuclear plant that the utility company has decided to decommission after accepting it ...

A survivor has recounted his experience of jumping out of a Kyoto Animation Co. studio after a man set fire to the building last week, killing 34 people. The 52-year-old employee was drawing landscapes on the second floor of the three-story building on the morning ...

The Russian Embassy in Seoul on Wednesday denied that Moscow had formally apologized over an alleged airspace violation the previous day, after South Korea said that Russia had expressed "deep regret" while blaming an equipment malfunction. A Russian military aircraft entered airspace near a group ...

The full-day test involving major highways around the capital started at midnight and was aimed at finding ways to reduce traffic by 30 percent during the games.

More than half of people in Japan oppose amending the nation's postwar pacifist Constitution under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government, a Kyodo news survey conducted after the Upper House election showed Tuesday. In the two-day telephone survey, held from Monday, 56.0 percent opposed Abe's drive ...

China has singled out Japan for its shifting security policies and lambasted the United States for undermining global stability, noting rising strategic competition among major powers, in its first defense white paper in seven years. The white paper, released Wednesday and titled "China's National Defense ...

Kenichiro Takeuchi has gone through numerous hardships as the son of a former death row inmate who was convicted of carrying out a mysterious fatal train accident in chaotic postwar Japan. While leading a life of obscurity and changing jobs nearly a dozen times, Takeuchi, ...

Nissan Motor Co. plans to expand job cuts to over 10,000 to help turn around its business, a person with direct knowledge of the matter said Wednesday, showing the tough road ahead for an automaker grappling with management upheaval. The global plan includes 4,800 job ...

Some 60 percent of mothers with children who attend elementary school are worried about being able to give them proper meals during the summer vacation, according to a survey by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. The survey, which polled 400 mothers during June and July, found that ...

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has urged Boris Johnson, Britain's incoming prime minister, to avoid a no-deal exit from the European Union. The request was included in a message, sent on Tuesday to congratulate the former foreign secretary on being elected leader of Britain's ruling Conservative ...

Global trade tensions, continued uncertainty and rising prospects for a no-deal Brexit are sapping the strength of the world economy, which faces a "precarious" 2020, the International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday. Trade conflicts are undercutting investment and weakening manufacturing, and the IMF urged countries ...

Aflac Life Insurance Japan Ltd. has begun checking for any inappropriate contracts for its insurance products sold on commission by Japan Post Holdings Co. units, sources said Wednesday. The investigation, launched this month, comes in the wake of the revelation last month of inappropriate sales ...

The apology came after the government chose not to appeal a court decision ordering the state to pay about ¥376 million in damages to family members of leprosy patients.

Honduran Rolando Rodrigo arrived last week in the Mexican city of Tapachula with his family, just one stop on the long route to the United States and the dream of a new life free from the poverty and gang violence that wracks their homeland. But ...

U.S. technology companies have urged Japan and South Korea to negotiate a resolution to a dispute that threatens to upend the global supply chain that the world's top electronics brands rely on make their products. Five of America's largest tech industry groups including the Semiconductor ...

France, Italy and Denmark gave initial support for a British plan for a European-led naval mission to ensure safe shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, proposed after Iran's seizure of a British-flagged tanker, three senior EU diplomats said Tuesday. The cautious backing at a meeting ...

Tokyo prosecutors have dropped charges against five people in Japan accused of attempting to travel to Syria to become fighters of the Islamic State militant group around August 2014. The Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office decided Monday not to indict the five, including a 31-year-old ...

Teenage voters' turnout for Sunday's House of Councilors election came to 31.33 percent for local constituency races, the internal affairs ministry said in a preliminary report Tuesday. The figure is 17.47 percentage points lower than the overall turnout of 48.80 percent and represented a 14.12-point ...

Severe flooding has killed at least 61 people, displaced nearly 800,000 and inundated thousands of homes across a third of Bangladesh, government officials said on Tuesday, after two weeks of heavy monsoon rains. Nearly 3 million people are struggling with flooding, the worst in two ...

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has nearly 1,000 investigations open into attempted intellectual property theft, nearly all of them involving Chinese, FBI director Christopher Wray said Tuesday. "There is no country that poses a more severe counterintelligence threat to this country right now than China ...

Puerto Rican justice officials on Tuesday were executing search warrants for the mobile phones of top associates of Gov. Ricardo Rossello amid a corruption scandal that provoked 10 days of protests demanding his resignation. The sometimes-violent demonstrations, which drew an estimated 500,000 people to the ...

Continued turmoil can be avoided only if new British Prime Minister Boris Johnson comes out with a 'no deal deal' on Brexit.

The Conservative Party has said yes, but will the United Kingdom give him a chance?

When U.S. President Donald Trump told four congresswomen of color they could "go back" where they came from if they weren't happy, some of us in Japan recognized the line as being one used here for far too long.

Our writer recalls heading to one of the country's biggest outdoor music festivals both as a first-timer and a blind Scotsman.

The recording of Tempalay's third full-length album, "With Love from the 21 Century," should have been a high point for lead vocalist and guitarist Ryoto Ohara. The group he fronts had climbed up the ranks of Japan's music community since forming in 2014, and ...

Mariko Tsutsui already had many stage, TV and film credits when she appeared in Koji Fukada's 2016 drama "Harmonium." But her performance as a woman whose life is destroyed by Tadanobu Asano's seductive ex-con was a revelation. She made the leap from the naive ...

Arriving in the middle of a seemingly endless rainy season in Tokyo, "Weathering With You" feels like it's benefitted from an ingenious stealth marketing campaign. Little has been left to chance with Makoto Shinkai's follow-up to "Your Name." The film raked in nearly $360 ...

Before you leave to enjoy a weekend of music, culture and ... maybe a typhoon? Check out this list of essentials you'll need to bring along.

Kris Johnson allowed only one hit in a complete game shutout Wednesday as he led the Hiroshima Carp to a 2-0 win over the Chunichi Dragons in the Central League. Ryoma Nishikawa gave Hiroshima an early advantage with a leadoff homer against rookie right-hander Takumi ...

The possibility exists that Tuesday's Rakuten Cup match between Barcelona and Chelsea was being considered by some influential soccer figure or another as an audition for Japan's inclusion in the increasingly popular International Champions Cup, the international preseason tournament that is currently taking place ...

A team of statistical analysts said Tuesday it expects Japan to have achieved a record medal haul by the end next year's Tokyo Olympics, ranking the host nation behind only two others on its predicted medal table. The Netherlands-based Gracenote Sports forecasts Japan will win ...

Yokozuna Kakuryu lifted the Emperor's Cup last Sunday after a final day defeat of fellow yokozuna Hakuho. The win gave Kakuryu his sixth title overall, with half of those championships coming in the past 18 months, after a period in which speculation was rife about ...

Just days after kicking off its preparation for the FIBA World Cup, the Japanese men's national team was jolted by some startlingly bad news out of the blue. Japan learned Tuesday that Yuki Togashi, the team's starting point guard, was diagnosed with a broken ...

The yearlong countdown to the opening ceremony for the 2020 Games was marked with IOC President Thomas Bach commending the progress Tokyo has made in preparing for the event.