This should be peak season for a 12-room hotel near the train station in the Chinese industrial hub of Wuhan. The Chinese New Year usually brings in plenty of travelers and delivers profits of around $3,000 a month. But the place is empty. Wuhan, the ...

Shelters made of cardboard start popping up in the basement of Tokyo's Shinjuku Station right before the shutters come down at 11 p.m., in corridors where salarymen rushing home and couples on late-night dates have just passed by. Dozens of homeless people sleeping rough in ...

Behind the escalating nuclear crisis sits a scandal-ridden energy industry in a cozy relationship with government regulators, who are often willing to overlook safety lapses. Leaks of radioactive steam and workers contaminated with radiation are just part of the disturbing catalog of accidents that have ...

Toyota's U.S. business has been a lifetime passion for Toshiaki Taguchi from humble beginnings 50 years ago, when barely 100 Toyota cars were being sold a month, to the world's No. 1 automaker today. At the automaker's Tokyo office last year, Taguchi, 69, the former ...

The nation's top telecom carrier is developing a simple wristwatchlike device to monitor the well-being of the elderly. The wearable sensor from NTT Corp., shown this week, is part of a growing effort to improve care of the old in a nation whose population is ...

YOKOSUKA, Kanagawa Pref. — The Leaf electric car is rolling down the bustling assembly line at Nissan's Oppama plant, taking the place of a gasoline-powered compact whose production was moved abroad last year. The Oppama plant in Yokosuka is a showcase for Nissan Motor Co.'s ...

Toy maker Tomy Co. is hoping to score a comeback in the U.S. this Christmas with toy trains and cars that boast a 40-year history in Japan but failed previously to catch on abroad. Tomy, Japan's No. 2 toy company, which also makes Transformer robots, ...

The iPhone's popularity in Japan is cracking open an industry long thought inaccessible to outsiders. For years, the typical Japanese cell phone — built to operate on a network hardly used anywhere else in the world — has been stuffed with quirky games and other ...

A town whose annual dolphin hunt was bloodily depicted in the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove" is hosting the first-ever meeting between antihunting activists and its fishermen to try to find common ground between the two sides. The film portrayed the fishermen from Taiji, Wakayama Prefecture, ...

Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins — one of the last surviving legends of the golden era of jazz — has just turned 80. His hair is a burst of white, and he staggers a bit when he walks on stage. But when he plays, he still ...