Sitting silently among the rolling pastures, rice paddies and lush forests of the idyllic village of Otama are rows upon rows of photovoltaic solar panels — vast swaths of dark gray injecting dissonance into the postcard-like landscape local residents pride themselves on. These solar farms ...

No ordinary pastor, Kazuhiro Sekino wields a bass guitar like a rock star to bring his congregation together.

When the capital hosted the Olympic Games over half a century ago, it was heralded as a symbol of Japan's postwar recovery. This time around, Tokyo appears keen on trading brick and mortar for hearts and minds. One-hundred kilometers of highways were freshly laid during ...

From his hilltop studio in the suburbs of Tokyo, Taku Oshima is reviving an ancient form of body art tradition he believes was practiced by the indigenous hunter-gatherers that inhabited Japan thousands of years ago. Lines, circles, dots, spirals, and other geometric shapes and patterns ...

Miyu Kojima's models of the apartments she has help clean after the deaths of their tenants can be hard to look at, but they also reveal the empathy needed to be able to continue in such a difficult line of work.

Eighty-one-year-old Sachiko Miura wakes up at 6 a.m. every day to prepare breakfast at her newly renovated apartment located near a large supermarket, spa and a hospital in the suburbs of Japan's third largest city. After cleaning her room and doing her laundry, she takes ...

A dying craft, sentō (public bathhouse) painting now has just three artisans continuing the art form. Can interest in Japanese culture, sparked by the 2020 Olympics, help renew an appreciation for the stunning murals?

The nation should expect the frequency of powerful typhoons and heavy rains to grow with global warming, says a professor at the Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research at Nagoya University.

Albert Kuwano Bakonyvari beckons me inside his factory's steam chamber, where hundreds of plump, white, crescent-shaped gyōza dumplings are neatly lined on stacks of trays fitted in steel racks, waiting to be sent to the freezer. "Want to try one? I bet you haven't eaten ...

White Rose Co. invented the plastic umbrella in the 1950s when Mitsuo Sudo was inspired by vinyl tablecloths brought to Japan by occupation forces. Now it's just one of few makers weathering the storm of cheap, mass-produced imports.