Kirin Brewery Co. on Tuesday announced the release of two new domestic whisky brands. The Fuji and Riku whiskies will be the first additions to the Kirin Holdings Co. unit's lineup of the liquor in some 15 years. The move follows widespread supply shortages of domestic ...

With more and more people wearing face masks due to the spread of the new coronavirus, a new issue has developed over the resulting litter on roads and in other places. An expert warned people against blindly discarding face masks due to the risk of ...

Suicides fell to a historic low in 2019, marking the tenth straight year of decline, but youth suicides continued to rise, police said Tuesday. Though suicide in Japan has a long history as a way of avoiding shame or dishonor, and its suicide rate still ...

The wife of a former Finance Ministry official who killed himself filed a lawsuit against the ministry and the former chief of its financial bureau, seeking damages of ¥110 million.

With the novel coronavirus shaking up the global economy, the Japanese government is scrambling for countermeasures to cushion the economic fallout.

Osaka city approved a plan Wednesday that will make it the first major city in Japan to offer free school lunches to all students at municipal elementary and junior high schools, as part of its economic measures to ease the burden on parents in ...

A local assembly has passed Japan's first ordinance aimed at reducing internet and video game addiction among young people, by recommending that screen time be limited to one hour per day. The ordinance, passed Wednesday by the Kagawa Prefectural Assembly, has triggered controversy — with ...

NTT Docomo Inc. said Wednesday it will launch smartphone services based on superfast 5G technology on March 25, two days ahead of its rival SoftBank Corp. NTT Docomo said it plans to offer the 5G service allowing data transmission of up to 100 gigabytes at ...

Japan is only using a sixth of its capacity to test for the new coronavirus, government data shows, adding to concerns it is understating the outbreak.

Financial assets held by households rose 3.3 percent from a year earlier to a record ¥1.90 quadrillion ($18 trillion) at the end of December due largely to higher stock prices at the time, the Bank of Japan said Wednesday. The figure marked a year-on-year gain ...

Nissan Motor Co. will pull out of local production in Indonesia due to falling vehicle sales in the country, a source close to the matter said Wednesday. The third-largest carmaker in Japan already halted production in January in the Southeast Asian country, including the construction ...

Major opposition parties have decided to support a single candidate in a House of Representatives by-election set to be held in Shizuoka Prefecture on April 26. The by-election in the prefecture's No. 4 constituency is now likely to be a de facto one-on-one race between ...

Almost half of Japanese firms saw their output and sales slide last month because of the coronavirus outbreak, with two-thirds anticipating the impact from the pandemic to last several months or longer, a Reuters poll showed, portending a big blow to an economy teetering ...

Despite a declining trend in Hokkaido, Japan has yet to reach its peak for COVID-19 infections, with the number of infected people still rising significantly in Aichi and Hyogo prefectures, a Kyodo News study has showed. The study, released Tuesday, is based on data from ...

Vladimir Putin's surprise move to allow himself to remain as president until 2036 caught even many Kremlin insiders off guard, leaving some feeling deceived by his motivation for changing the constitution. His sudden reversal — approving a plan that he'd long publicly resisted — was ...

Japan's exports slipped for a 15th straight month in February as U.S. and China-bound shipments declined, suggesting a cooling of business activity in the world's third-largest economy due to the coronavirus outbreak. Imports from China fell at their fastest pace since 1986 after the virus, ...

The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday ordered ¥1 million in additional damages be paid each to some 300 evacuees from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, down by two-thirds from the amount awarded by a lower court ruling. The total amount of additional compensation Tokyo Electric ...

Joe Biden's decisive victories in Florida, Illinois and Arizona on Tuesday effectively put the Democratic nomination out of reach for Bernie Sanders. The former U.S. vice president won all three states by wide enough margins that he now has a majority of all delegates pledged ...

SoftBank Group Corp. told shareholders of WeWork that it could withdraw from an agreement to buy $3 billion (¥321.4 billion) of stock in the embattled coworking business, casting doubt on a deal that had been set to close in about two weeks. In a message ...

Taiwan plans to bar all new arrivals by foreign nationals, adding to the growing ranks of governments shutting their borders in a bid to slow the global spread of the coronavirus. The ban on arrivals will start Thursday, according to Chen Shih-chung, the head of ...

Facebook Inc. said a filter for combating spam on the social network was beset by a bug that mistakenly eliminated legitimate news stories and other posts, miscategorizing them as content that violates its rules. Several users complained on social media that their posts, including those ...

Josh Ostroff had a difficult choice to make: Cancel a trip to Japan in March that he'd been promising his 10-year-old son for three years, or ignore travel warnings and put his family's health at risk amid the coronavirus outbreak. He decided to cancel the ...

The world's richest nations prepared more costly measures on Tuesday to combat the global fallout of the coronavirus that has infected tens of thousands of people, triggered social restrictions unseen since World War II and sent economies spinning toward recession. With the highly contagious respiratory ...

For Japan, COVID-19 has taken a 2020 that was meant to be a stable and historic year with the Olympics and has thrown it into disarray.

Trump views foreign leaders who wield dominant power and authority as people who can help him solve international problems.

Tokyo has more than its fair share of top-notch gyōza spots. Our readers follow up on Robbie Swinnerton's list with several more standout recommendations.

Indian filmmaker Anshul Chauhan opted to make his first feature film in Japan, but discovered just how difficult working with the local industry can be.

Yokozuna Hakuho bounced back from his first loss and collected his 10th win of the Spring Grand Sumo Tournament on Wednesday to remain in a two-way tie for the lead with rank-and-filer Aoiyama. The Mongolian-born yokozuna charged out of the gates in the final bout ...

Yesterday's Rikishi File was a profile of Kotonishiki — a former sekiwake who is second all-time in the number of special prizes won, with 18. The man who sits atop that particular list was one of Kotonishiki's great rivals, Akinoshima. A native of Hiroshima, Akinoshima's combined ...

Since late February, Japanese soccer's professional and amateur competitions have shut down in an attempt to protect players, coaches and fans from the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak that has forced the cancellation of major sporting events around the world. On Tuesday, a wrench was thrown into ...