"I'll have a draft," says Yasuo Fujinuma, heaving himself down at the sushi counter. He pulls a pack of cigarettes from a frayed pocket of his sweater. From the corner of the restaurant, a small TV hums the noon weather forecast. He never drinks ...

The road, hemmed in on one side by empty warehouses and the other by a concrete seawall, ends abruptly in a desolate parking lot. Men step out of their cars and into the darkness, then slip behind the sliding doors of a warehouse. Inside, ...

On a side street near a darkened Ikata shopping arcade full of abandoned storefronts, the Sushi Ko restaurant is unusually busy on a weekday. Balancing a tray full of drinks, Sachiyo Ozaki said most of her restaurant's customers were there because of an industry shunned ...

Prosecutors have confirmed that Nissan's arrested chairman, Carlos Ghosn, is being held in the spartan Tokyo Detention House in Katsushika Ward — its many rules and restrictions making for a stark contrast with his comfortable, globe-trotting lifestyle. Ghosn is most probably being held in a ...

Takashi Odajima picked up a cracked and faded photograph and dusted it off with his sleeve. He smiled a little sadly at the image from long ago, back when he was a baby boy. In the photo, he sits on his uncle's lap as his ...

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 ...