Legislation planned to address passive smoking by banning lighting up in restaurants is in limbo because of strife between the health ministry and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. After an attempt to submit the bill to the Diet failed earlier this year, the Health, Labor ...

A push is underway to create smaller, community-integrated group homes for people with disabilities in the wake of last year's mass murder at a large, outdated care facility. Around 130,000 people with disabilities are currently accommodated in some 2,600 large facilities built in relatively isolated ...

A Tokyo-based company that employs mothers who are raising children is pioneering a way to make it easier for such women to stay in the workforce. At Mama Square Stellar Town in a big shopping mall in Kita Ward in the city of Saitama, some ...

When nursing home caregiver Yukari Nishihara, 34, told her female boss that she was pregnant, she was taken aback by the response. "Are you determined to work no matter what happens to your baby? If you cannot work, you'd better step away," her boss said. That ...

Yoko Hayashi, the first Japanese head of a U.N. watchdog on women's rights, is geared up to help improve the lives of females suffering discrimination. In February, the 59-year-old Tokyo-based lawyer assumed the chair of the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, ...

Long before Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared empowering women in the economy to be an essential pillar of his "Abenomics" strategy, Kyoko Higashiyama made it a rule in her company to create opportunities for women to land full-time employment and be able to work ...

A group of female central government bureaucrats with children has called for an improvement in working conditions, including an end to notoriously long hours, to bring about a better work-life balance. The move comes at a time when the administration led by Prime Minister Shinzo ...