When Lotte Co. launched its Yukimi Daifuku ice cream encased in soft rice flour pastry in 1981, it was looking for a year-round product to strengthen its foothold in a domestic ice cream market long dominated by dairy companies. More than two decades later, Lotte's ...

When U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms baffled journalists by proclaiming the "floccinaucinihilipilification" of an international nuclear test ban treaty in the late 1990s, Matthew Fargo instantly figured out what he meant. The 29-letter word, which loosely means rendering something meaningless, comprises four Latin words — flocci ...

Japan "clearly wants to move forward without looking back" once all the atomic bomb survivors are gone, the director of a new documentary film on the hibakusha said. Steven Okazaki was speaking recently in New York at a screening of his film "White Light/Black Rain," ...

Kyoto-born running phenomenon Toshiko D'Elia, 77, who has consistently placed at or near the top of her age group in U.S. and world competitions for the past 30 years, says the secret to her remarkably long running career is to "run to live, not ...

As New York City kicks off a weeklong event celebrating Japanese food culture Sunday, few people would make the connection between traditional culinary delicacies and glittering musicals on Broadway. The exception is Kumiko Yoshii, a project coordinator for the festival. Yoshii has produced a number ...

Despite being the inventor of monosodium glutamate, or MSG, Ajinomoto Co., Japan's largest seasonings maker, is little known in the United States. But its amino acid business has been gaining ground in the growing U.S. market in recent years. "Most Americans don't have the slightest ...

Japan is not, and will not be, a major player on denuclearizing North Korea because of its intransigence on the abduction issue, according to a top U.S. expert on Japan. Gerald Curtis, the Burgess Professor of Political Science at Columbia University, said Japan "put itself ...

Astronaut Soichi Noguchi says he pictures the image of the Earth whenever he hears the words global environment, and says he wants to convey to others how truly beautiful the planet is. Addressing an audience of about 80 people, including children, at the Nippon Club ...

Shinzo Abe, new president of the Liberal Democratic Party, is an ideological, young leader set to rally nationalist supporters, but his influence will be limited largely by his lack of executive experience and the growing U.S. rapprochement with China, says Japan expert Gerald Curtis. Curtis, ...

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States had a deep impact on the Japanese children who were living there. Unlike adults, however, they have fewer ways of expressing their grief. Masako Mori, a clinical psychologist who is a counselor at the Japan ...