The government said Tuesday it has postponed this month's ceremonies to celebrate Crown Prince Akishino's ascent to first in line to the chrysanthemum throne amid the new coronavirus outbreak. The Rikkoshi no Rei ceremonies, originally scheduled for Sunday, are intended to proclaim the 54-year-old crown ...

Senior Japanese ruling party and opposition officials agreed Tuesday to reduce lawmakers' salaries by 20 percent for a year as part of efforts to overcome the novel coronavirus crisis. The accord was reached at a meeting between Hiroshi Moriyama, Diet affairs chief of the governing ...

The population fell 276,000 to 126.17 million as of Oct. 1, declining for the ninth straight year.

Seat reservations for shinkansen and limited express services for the upcoming Golden Week holidays have plunged 90 percent to a record low in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, data by six major railway companies showed Tuesday. Total seat reservations as of Monday at East ...

The company expects to record a ¥1.8 trillion ($16.7 billion) loss from its Vision Fund and another ¥800 billion in losses from SoftBank’s own investments.

Experts from a government-appointed panel have said they were not able to verify where or when patients had contracted the virus in 40 percent of reported cases.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government confirmed 161 cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, marking the first rise in three days. The infections, which compare with a record 197 new cases marked Saturday, bring the total number of infections in the capital to 2,319, according to metropolitan government ...

The global crisis over the COVID-19 pandemic calls for a global solution, but so far the international community has not shown a strong desire to get on the same page. Instead of formulating a coordinated front in the fight against the coronavirus, world leaders are ...

The coronavirus outbreak will reduce Japanese automakers’ combined operating profit by 38 percent this business year, but the manufacturers may rebound faster than they did after the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs Group. Demand could "recover ...

China’s top agency overseeing Hong Kong said lawmakers blocking action by the local legislature were potentially violating their oaths, in a signal that Beijing was losing patience with the monthslong legislative logjam. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office urged the city’s Legislative Council in ...

U.S. President Donald Trump declared he has "total” authority to order states to relax social distancing to combat the coronavirus outbreak and reopen their economies, and warned that governors who refuse would face political consequences. "When someone is president of the United States, the authority ...

Kumamoto Prefecture on Tuesday marked the fourth anniversary of two massive earthquakes that killed 275 people, with a ceremony scaled down amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Twenty-six participants, including those who lost family members in the disaster, observed a moment of silence at the Kumamoto Prefectural ...

Drugs being repurposed in hopes they will help against COVID-19 cost relatively little to make but may prove challenging to produce in quantities needed for a pandemic, a drug pricing expert has said. "Any pharmaceutical company manufacturing any treatment currently in clinical trials against coronavirus ...

China's Mekong River dams held back large amounts of water during a damaging drought in downstream countries last year despite China having higher-than-average water levels upstream, a U.S. research company said in a study. China's government disputed the findings, saying there was low rainfall during ...

Joe Biden, now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, is in the earliest stages of choosing a running mate who can help him defeat President Donald Trump in November, a decision complicated by the effects of the coronavirus crisis on the country and the campaign. Biden, ...

Environment Minister Shinjiro Koizumi warned Monday that the Paris climate accord could face "death" if steps to fight global warming are put on the back burner to facilitate the economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Many economists and policymakers are forecasting a steep global recession ...

A huge forest fire in Ukraine that has been raging for more than a week is now just one kilometer from the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant and poses a radiation risk, Greenpeace Russia warned on Monday, citing satellite images. Ukraine's Emergency Situations Service said ...

Trupti Katdare was in a slum in the central Indian city of Indore when the mob attacked. She and a group of other public health workers had been tracking down a man who might have had contact with a recently confirmed case of the new ...

If South Korea’s president can leverage his success fighting the coronavirus to help his party win Wednesday’s elections, it could give him fresh momentum to reshape an economy reeling from the pandemic. Moon Jae-in’s success in containing one of the first flashpoints of the virus ...

Sen. Bernie Sanders on Monday endorsed his longtime rival former Vice President Joe Biden, a move aimed at unifying a Democratic Party long fractured along moderate and liberal lines ahead of the election match-up against President Donald Trump. Sanders cited the novel coronavirus outbreak as ...

The prime minister is counting on the nation’s young people to do the right thing.

Article 41 provides the government with sufficient power to take aggressive action against the COVID-19 outbreak.

The only way to contain the threat from extremists during the pandemic is to discredit their insidious ideologies.

Japanese-language exams are in an uncertain state due to the outbreak of novel coronavirus around the world. Your Japanese study doesn't need to stop, though.

The particle "kurai" is very helpful in trying to illustrate the degree of something happening, though translating it isn't as straightforward as you'd think.

This Japan Times article looks at a recent meme spawned by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent mask policy, but what's a meme?

According to a Kyodo story that outlines vocabulary related to postal services, Japan Post can't guarantee the delivery of international mail due to a disruption in airline travel.

Director Nobuhiko Obayashi, who died on April 10 at the age of 82, was incredibly prolific during his six-decade career. A pioneering experimental filmmaker in the 1960s, he went on to direct 2,000 television commercials (by his own estimate; no exact count exists) and ...

The B. League will play its 2020-21 season with teams split into two conferences — the East and West — instead of three, which has been the format since its inception in 2016, the league announced following a meeting of its governors on Tuesday. The ...

Marlins manager Don Mattingly and his team are coping with being in limbo as the coronavirus pandemic continues to create uncertainty in the world of professional sports and for many other businesses. Mattingly has grown out a bushy light gray beard in the month since ...