When Isao Akutagawa moved to the sleepy riverside community of Mabicho in Okayama Prefecture 45 years ago, it seemed like the perfect suburb to raise his children. In the town, which was merged with the nearby city of Kurashiki in 2005 and is now called ...

Mazlum Balibay paves Japan's roads, digs its sewers and lays its water pipes — all for a country that doesn't want him. Balibay, 24, is a Kurdish asylum seeker who fled to Japan more than eight years ago after he said his family was persecuted ...

Niculas Fernando died at a Tokyo immigration detention center sometime between 9:33 a.m. and 10:44 a.m. on Nov. 22, 2014, according to the coroner. But it wasn't until shortly after 1 p.m. that day that guards realized something was badly wrong — even though Fernando ...

Yasuyuki Yoshinaga was in a good mood at the early May earnings briefing in Tokyo. The top executive at the maker of Subaru automobiles joked that he would have to wear a helmet on an upcoming trip to the United States. The reason: Dealers ...

When Yoshitaka Shindo was a boy, he did not hear much from his family about his grandfather, Tadamichi Kuribayashi, commander of the Japanese troops who fought and died in the bloody Battle of Iwojima. The battle, in which nearly 7,000 U.S. Marines and Navy sailors ...

For Tokyo-based condiments maker Kagome, and perhaps for the government, the challenge of breaking with a decade and a half of deflation boils down to the price of a bottle of ketchup. The country's most popular ketchup brand is hiking prices for the first time ...

Almost a year after Japan pledged to double hazard pay, workers still don't know how much extra — if anything — they'll get for cleaning up the nuclear disaster.

With a telegenic presence, powerful ruling party mentors and a talent for avoiding making political enemies, new trade and industry minister Yuko Obuchi may have what it takes to become the country's first female prime minister.