Just a couple minutes from the Okinawa Prefectural Government building and the busy shopping street Kokusai-dori, Sora Shokudo offers jerk chicken on the menu — a Caribbean cuisine that goes well with rum — which is now also produced in Okinawa and attracting interest ...

To merge or not to merge? That is the question Osaka hopes to finally answer as the campaign for Osaka governor kicked off Thursday morning.

When Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui and his sidekick, Osaka Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura, announced they would resign their positions to run for each other's seats next month, local reactions ranged from disbelief to exasperation. Osaka politics has always been, to put it politely, different from more ...

Former Osaka municipal assemblyman Akira Yanagimoto of the Liberal Democratic Party has been tapped to run against Ichiro Matsui, the governor of Osaka Prefecture and head of Osaka Ishin no Kai (One Osaka), in next month's Osaka mayoral race, with the focus on whether ...

After a frantic scramble, local political and business leaders remain concerned about who will support him.

Frustrated by their failure to merge Osaka's wards, Gov. Ichiro Matsui and Mayor Hirofumi Yoshimura shock political circles by quitting to run for each other’s positions next month.

Japan ranked 165th out of 193 countries for its percentage of female politicians holding seats in lower or single parliamentary chambers, a report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union shows.

Faced with a rapidly shrinking population of elderly residents reluctant to run for seats on the local council, the village of Okawa, Kochi Prefecture, passed a referendum Monday designed to make it easier serve on the council while concurrently holding side jobs. The measure goes ...

“Now that the clear opposition of the Okinawa people has been conveyed, it’s up to individuals in the rest of Japan to consider our wishes,” an activist says.

More than 70 percent of voters in Okinawa on Sunday voted against a plan to relocate U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma from Ginowan to Henoko — a coastal area in the northeastern part of the main island — in a closely watched prefecture-wide ...