On a wooded lake shore in southwest Hokkaido, the government is building a modernist shrine that has divided the indigenous Ainu community whose vanishing culture it was designed to celebrate. At a cost so far of ¥20 billion, the Symbolic Space for Ethnic Harmony is ...

Toyota Motor's Japan Taxi, born in a government committee and designed to be an all-things-to-all-people cab, has become a high-priced icon of Tokyo's budget-busting 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Launched in 2017, the indigo car is the realization of a government project to put a ...

The Kaga helicopter carrier is not the biggest, fastest or most powerful warship to sail the seas, but its 500 crew wage a daily war on dirt and grime to keep it the cleanest. At sunset each evening on a nine-day goodwill voyage from Indonesia ...

Japan's largest warship, the Kaga helicopter carrier, sailed into Sri Lanka's Colombo harbor this weekend, marking Tokyo's highest profile salvo in a diplomatic battle with China for influence along the region's vital commercial sea lanes. Japan has long provided low-interest loans and aid to Sri ...

Northrop Grumman Corp. is eyeing a Japanese jet fighter project that could pit it against Lockheed Martin Corp. three sources said, almost three decades after it lost a similar competition to build an advanced stealth jet for the U.S. Air Force. "Northrop is interested," said ...

Tokyo’s upgrade could help ease trade friction with Washington and provide cutting-edge protection against the arsenals of North Korea and China.

On a cold day in February, Takuto Okamoto guided his first tour group to a panorama few outsiders have witnessed in person: construction cranes looming over Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant. Seven years after deadly tsunami ripped through the ...

U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. plans to offer Japan a stealth fighter design based on its export-banned F-22 Raptor and advanced F-35 Lightning II aircraft, two sources said. Lockheed has discussed the idea with Japanese defense ministry officials and will make a formal proposal ...

North Korea's growing missile arsenal might be the most obvious and immediate military threat facing Japan, but defense planners in Tokyo are focused on a much larger and more challenging foe as they prepare for the years ahead. China has stepped up military spending and ...