Endangered grasshopper found in Nagano for first time in 50 years
Several red-winged grasshoppers (akabane-batta in Japanese), categorized as likely to become extinct in Japan, have been spotted in a grassland area in Nagano Prefecture, where they had not been seen in five decades, prefectural officials said. The red-winged grasshopper is described in the Environment Ministry's ...
A former member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult is appealing a Tokyo High Court decision in early March to uphold his nine-year prison sentence, court officials said Wednesday. The appeal by Makoto Hirata, 49, who had been on the run for almost 17 years before ...
The University of Tokyo has formed a strategic partnership with the University of Cambridge to deepen exchanges with the elite British university, including faculty and student exchanges, as well as joint workshops. Japan's top-ranked university said the partnership, similar to ones it has also forged ...
Benesse Holdings Inc. has learned of a new customer data leak at an education service unit, after the company was the target of Japan's largest-ever data theft scandal last year. A temporary employee at Transcosmos Inc., a Benesse Corp. subcontractor for call-center operations, illegally acquired ...
Sankei disciplines staff over apparent plagiarism after blogger complains
The Sankei Shimbun has punished a writer and disciplined two supervisors for running an article on its news website in January containing phrases that were almost identical to those that previously appeared on a private blog. The Sankei said: "There will be no excuse if ...
Kono urges Abe to erase doubts over war history
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe must erase doubts — sparked by his own words and deeds — that he wants to water down accounts of Japan's wartime wrongs, according to a former leader of the Liberal Democratic Party. Yohei Kono, who as chief Cabinet secretary issued ...
West's first Buddhist mission was in London
Buddhists in Japan — aided by an Irishman — established the religion's first Western mission in London, according to research by a team of academics in Ireland and Japan. The recent discovery overturns the long-held assumption that the first Buddhist mission in the West was ...
Japan's regions scramble to lure Thai tourists
As the number of travelers from Southeast Asia to Japan grows, due partly to relaxed visa requirements, local and prefectural governments are stepping up efforts to draw Thai tourists by holding promotional events in Bangkok. The number of travelers from Thailand, known as a country ...
Japan should follow wartime slogan to deal with tax evasion, LDP lawmaker says
A Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker has raised eyebrows after suggesting Japan should follow a wartime slogan used to justify past global expansion ambitions in its current approach to tax evasion. Junko Mihara, a House of Councilors member from the ruling party, referred to the slogan ...
Chongryon to pay over ¥200 million a year to rent HQ building
The General Association of Korean Residents, a pro-Pyongyang group known as Chongryon, has agreed to pay over ¥200 million ($1.6 million) a year to rent its headquarters building in Tokyo from a real estate firm, sources said. The firm based in Yamagata Prefecture bought the ...
Foreign Ministry's 1969 China map identifies Senkaku Islands by Japanese name
The Foreign Ministry has published on its website a map released by a Chinese government organ in 1969 calling the disputed Senkaku Islands by their Japanese name. The ministry's website already had a Taiwanese map of 1970 using the same name. Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said ...
The city of Otsu agreed Tuesday to settle a damages suit filed by the relatives of a 13-year-old boy who killed himself in 2011 after being bullied, agreeing to pay compensation and apologize for the way the school and the local board of education ...
