National agency Heritage Malta worked with Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure the painstaking restoration of samurai armor that spent over half a century forgotten in storage in Valletta, Malta.
JAPAN / History
May 1, 2025
Lost and found history receives glittering homecoming at Osaka Expo
Hidden away since World War II, samurai armor gifted to Malta from Japan in 1862 has been restored to its full glory and put on display at the Malta Pavilion.
Michiko Takagaki talks about the personal items she has displayed of a relative who died in the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in Fuchu, Hiroshima Prefecture, on April 26.
JAPAN / History
Apr 29, 2025
Items of an A-bomb victim who died the day he enlisted to be displayed
Just 15 minutes after enlisting in the now-defunct Imperial Japanese military, an atomic bomb was dropped some 700 meters from where he stood.
While taking refuge on Mount Kasagi from the shogunate’s forces, Emperor Go-Daigo had a prophetic dream that eventually led him to secure the support of military strategist Kusunoki Masashige.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Apr 19, 2025
‘I scud before the autumn wind’: Emperor Go-Daigo’s fall from grace
The “Masukagami,” a 14th-century historical chronicle, offers a wrenching account of the emperor’s struggle for power — and eventual downfall.
On April 23, 1925, The Japan Times ran a story about the principal clauses of the new Peace Preservation Law that was enacted to suppress ideologies deemed dangerous by the state.
Japan Times 1925: Peace law has several teeth
The Peace Preservation Law was a means of ideological suppression that grew tighter over time until it was repealed by Allied authorities following World War II.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during an Upper House Budget Committee meeting on Friday.
JAPAN / History
Mar 28, 2025
Ishiba to visit Iwo Jima to honor soldiers who died in fierce WWII battle
He will be the first sitting prime minister to visit the island since April 2013, when then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made a stopover.
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba plans to set up an expert panel as early as April to reflect on lessons learned from Japan's defeat in World War II.
JAPAN / History
Mar 27, 2025
Ishiba eyes expert panel to reflect on lessons learned from WWII
The prime minister is unlikely to release a government-adopted statement to mark the 80th anniversary this year of Japan's surrender in the war.
A university student reads out the names of victims of U.S. air raids on Tokyo during World War II, during a memorial ceremony held in the capital on Thursday.
JAPAN / History
Mar 21, 2025
Names of Tokyo air raid victims read out in ceremony
About 80 people spent about five hours reading out the names of 4,138 victims.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic