Rikishi in Japan are coming up big — literally and figuratively — doing little things to promote the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and, though not part of the Olympic program, the ancient national sport of sumo. On Wednesday, 70 wrestlers of sumo's top two divisions, ...

Former world No. 4 Kimiko Date said Wednesday she has yet to give life after sport a serious thought, as she is still going back and forth between strange emptiness and ecstatic relief now that she has retired from competitive tennis. "There's a sentiment of ...

Life may offer an unexpected surprise after an epic letdown, but in the case of first-time space voyager Norishige Kanai, it was an out-of-this-world opportunity. As Japan's youngest astronaut, Kanai, 40, is set to undertake a long-duration mission to the International Space Station when he ...

International Paralympic Committee President Sir Philip Craven has a simple but complicated wish: to fix the world so that he is recognized not as a user of a wheelchair, but as the person he is. "We're not the disabled. I'm me, and you're you," Craven ...

An old, unused smartphone lying around the house just collecting dust might one day be a source of admiration, dangling proudly around an Olympic athlete's neck at a medal podium ceremony. Hironao Ito, a sophomore at Waseda University, is hoping this idea alone will spark ...

Reigning Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu will essentially be competing against himself at this weekend's NHK Trophy. After setting three world records in two nights a year ago at this event, the final leg of the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating series, the fans at ...

Assistance dogs and their owners often get a bum rap in a society that is supposed to be, on paper at least, inclusive and nondiscriminatory. In reality, people like wheelchair-user Naoto Anzue and his pet pooch, Dante, are turned away at shops and restaurants, although ...

Kazumi Nakayama had always been an athlete, but the disability she developed later in life made her a more determined one and opened the doors to a world she had never imagined. Nine years after a critical injury to her spine left her legs paralyzed, ...

While many junior high school boys spent their summer vacations on the beach in their swimwear, Ichikawa Fukutaro III got very little fun in the sun, spending much of his day in a kimono in the backstage dressing room of a kabuki theater. But he ...

Nanako Oba, Japan's first ever "birth coordinator," knows what it takes to educate the public about a topic too often avoided in Japanese society: sex. The 51-year-old mother of five, who runs four businesses, takes a prevention-rather-than-cure approach and believes in pre-empting potential problems regarding ...