Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed Monday to expedite the enactment of legislation needed to declare a state of emergency, in order to "minimize the impact on Japanese citizens' livelihood" from the rapid spread of COVID-19. "It is critical to always anticipate the worst-case scenario, and ...

On the road to becoming Japan's longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe has overcome countless political perils. He may have met his match with COVID-19. In a sign of mounting concern, Abe abandoned his relatively mild approach to the epidemic last week with a shock announcement ...

Japan is seeing a growing number of cases of harassment, bullying and other forms of discrimination targeting local communities affected by the outbreak of the new virus that causes COVID-19 and those involved in dealing with the situation. The municipal government of Yuasa, Wakayama Prefecture, ...

Some schools are leaving their facilities open so children will have a place to go if their parents are working.

Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda issues an emergency statement, and the initial reaction on the Tokyo Stock Exchange is positive.

Rakuten Inc.'s mobile phone unit will charge less than half the fees its rivals do for high data usage, hoping to entice subscribers when it launches services next month as Japan's fourth entrant to the market, sources close to the matter said Monday. The e-commerce ...

A cruise ship company in Kobe was effectively bankrupted by the coronavirus crisis on Monday after filing for protection from creditors under the corporate rehabilitation law. In a statement, Luminous Cruising Co., which runs one of Japan's largest restaurant cruise ships, laid the blame on ...

The move will please conservative lawmakers in the LDP who are unhappy about the lack of improvement with the Senkaku territorial dispute and other issues.

Asia's factories took a tumble in February under the weight of the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak, with a severe plunge in activity in China driving down output across the region. South Korea and Japan, where confirmed cases of the virus have accelerated recently, showed sharp ...

Nearly a quarter of those who died of illness or stress linked to the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the hardest-hit prefectures were people with disabilities, a Kyodo News survey released Sunday showed. Disabled people accounted for 24.6 percent of total "disaster-related deaths" in ...

The experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention huddled in a room with Bela Matyas, health officer of Solano County, California. They had a raft of questions about a milestone case in the spread of the coronavirus: the first U.S. victim ...

Japan is becoming a center of concern as the coronavirus spreads globally, with the country's official infection tally suspected to be the tip of the iceberg of a much wider outbreak. As of Monday afternoon, Japan had 263 confirmed cases of the pneumonia-causing virus, excluding ...

All 3,711 passengers and crew members of the Diamond Princess cruise ship, quarantined at Yokohama port due to COVID-19 infections, disembarked from the vessel Sunday, the health ministry has said. On Sunday, the last group of some 130 crew members left the British-flagged ship after ...

Mahathir Mohamad may be at least temporarily out of power, but the 94-year-old leader isn't going down without a fight. Mahathir's abrupt resignation last Monday kicked off a week of horse-trading that saw his fortunes rise and fall by the hour. On Saturday morning, he ...

Some medical experts have started to warn that the overuse of alcohol-based hand sanitizers to protect against the coronavirus could inversely raise the risk of infection via skin disorders. Washing one's hands too many times can also have an adverse effect by abrading the skin, ...

Australia will require government departments to use more recycled products, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday, as Canberra looks to repair ties with Pacific island nations despite a refusal to step up efforts on global warming. Morrison last year angered Pacific Island leaders when ...

King Henry VI of England banned kissing in 1439 to battle the plague. As the world confronts the coronavirus spreading from China, some health authorities are again urging people to refrain from physical displays of affection. Epidemiologists say limiting contact could help slow the march ...

Pete Buttigieg dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination on Sunday, saying he no longer saw a change of winning, the day after fellow moderate Joe Biden won a big victory in South Carolina. The move shook up the Democratic contest to ...

The U.S. and its partners have invested too much in Afghanistan to walk away without a stable and peaceful future for the country.

The free flow of information provides the best defense against the spread of COVID-19.

Leaders need deft political skills to survive the COVID-19 crisis.

Nioh 2 has really demonic players; One Punch Man is late to the game, but in a good way; and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon ditches the trainers.

After being featured in The Japan Times Adopt Me! column in October 2018, a beautiful calico cat named Leggy has now found a home with Shiori Hamasako and her husband, Morgan Ruler. The couple had been grieving the death of their previous cat, Karl, who ...

For the past quarter century, fans of Japanese pop culture in Australia and New Zealand have been served almost exclusively by a single distributor: Madman.

The Hiroshima Carp said Monday they will terminate the contract of Xavier Batista, a Dominican player who is nearing the end of a six-month doping suspension. The 28-year-old slugger tested positive for a banned substance in June last year, and Nippon Professional Baseball announced the ...

The oddest thing about the preseason game the Yomiuri Giants and Tokyo Yakult Swallows played at Tokyo Dome on Saturday night — and really the same could be said about all the other games over the weekend too — was the lack of fans. The ...

Nippon Professional Baseball and the J. League, two of Japan's biggest professional sports circuits, will form a tag team amid the COVID-19 outbreak, the two entities announced in a Tokyo news conference on Monday. On Tuesday, the two leagues will officially launch a joint task ...

Nordic combined skier Akito Watabe won his first World Cup event in two seasons on Sunday, moving to within one win of equaling Kenji Ogiwara's Japan record of 19 World Cup victories. The win at Lahti was Watabe's first since he won the season-ending individual ...