Five-year old Yua Funato was found unconscious at a Tokyo apartment in March, her feet severely frostbitten and her face and body covered with bruises that were inflicted by her 33-year-old stepfather. She was later pronounced dead at a hospital from pneumonia-induced sepsis caused ...

With the number of children shrinking, popular entertainment naturally began targeting the otaku population that didn't hesitate to open their wallets for material many considered juvenile.

Houseflies, the Soviet space program and manned missions to Mars — these aren't plot devices for a Cold War space thriller, but key terms to understand the history behind Fukuoka-based startup Musca Inc.'s project to provide a solution to some of the world's most ...

Television sets inexplicably turn on and off. Visitors who enter his room complain of sudden migraines. Rapping sounds keep him awake at night, and psychics warn he is being stalked by ghostly apparitions. In Tanishi Matsubara's tales of living in apartments with grim histories of ...

Apply 140 milliliters of hot water on the brown rectangular block, then stir for 60 seconds and voila, a steaming plate of chicken cutlet curry — that quintessential Japanese comfort food — is resurrected from its mummified state, offering instant gratification with minimal preparation. This ...

Perched cross-legged on an altar in one corner of Churenji Temple, cupped palms facing upward, the monk Tetsumonkai is set up for perpetual meditation — just as he intended as he lay dying nearly two centuries ago. The skeletal figure draped in clerical robes is ...

Sandwiched between old residential apartments in the capital's central Minato Ward is the Arimaston Building, an eccentric collage of individually patterned concrete slabs piled upon each other as if by happenstance. It's the work of Keisuke Oka, who has been building the unfinished structure mostly ...

The year is 1842 and the artist known as Hokusai is in his 80s. He has already lived nearly twice the average life span of his peers, but his advanced age hasn't stopped him from embarking on a 250-kilometer journey from Edo to Obuse, a ...

Call it a flashy billionaire's whimsy or a stroke of PR genius. When Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk hinted on Twitter last week that a Japanese person could be the first tourist to go around the moon on board Space X's Big Falcon Rocket, social ...

A muffled bass line is soon matched by Katsumi Tanaka's staccato electric guitar riff loosely emulating a shamisen. Congas and timbales start grooving in the rhythm of cumbia before the horn section dives in, setting the stage for Fredy Tsukamoto to belt out a ...