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Canadian-born Jesse Cunningham came to Japan to teach in the JET Programme, and later found opportunities to learn traditional blacksmithing in Kochi Prefecture.
COMMUNITY / Issues / The Foreign Element
Aug 4, 2025

The international artists supporting Japan’s craft legacy

From Kochi to Kamakura, non-Japanese craftspeople are training with local artisans and carving out a niche for themselves.
The Bank of Japan kept the overnight call rate at 0.5% at the end of a two-day policy meeting in a unanimous vote, according to a statement Thursday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jul 31, 2025

BOJ keeps rates unchanged and lifts price view after U.S. trade deal

While the changes in the outlook suggested Gov. Kazuo Ueda’s board is closer to its next rate hike, the central bank also avoided dropping any clear hints as to the exact timing.
Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 1, 2025

Japan’s Kato voices concern with yen at weakest since March

Kato’s comments came after the yen slid past the 150 level against the dollar on Thursday, following the BOJ’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged.
Despite topping physical health rankings, Japan’s children face a worsening mental health crisis due to limited early education, inconsistent counseling support and poor awareness of their rights.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 3, 2025

It’s time to take children’s mental health seriously

Given these disparities, it is clear the government needs to build a consistent school system with appropriate emotional support mechanisms
A notice board at a station in Tokyo announces suspended shinkansen services due to a tsunami warning after a strong quake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday. 
EDITORIALS
Aug 1, 2025

A troubling reminder of Japan's vulnerability to natural disasters

There is considerable work to be done. Multiple studies and surveys of municipalities show that they are not prepared for a big incident.
Twelve months on from Aug. 5, 2024, when Japan’s stock benchmarks plummeted 12%, the broader Topix index is once again hovering near record highs.
BUSINESS / Markets / FOCUS
Aug 5, 2025

A year after Japan's stock meltdown, markets show resilience and promise

Clearer BOJ messaging, corporate reforms and a better-than-feared U.S. tariff deal has traders in Japan's markets betting against a repeat of last year's crash.
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Economic Revitalization Minister Ryosei Akazawa. Akazawa, Japan's chief tariff negotiator, is returning to the United States for another round of trade talks.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 5, 2025

Akazawa returns to U.S. for more talks as tariff deal looks shaky

Japan is urging the United States to cut the tariff on cars as soon as possible.
People pray in front of the cenotaph for the atomic bombing victims at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in the city of Hiroshima on Wednesday, which marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing.
JAPAN
Aug 6, 2025

Hiroshima calls for nuclear-free world on 80th anniversary of atomic bombing

Any message to create a world free of nuclear weapons from the only country that experienced atomic bombings appears to be losing momentum amid global conflicts.
A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 6, 2025

80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped

As a 7-year-old boy in Hiroshima, Howard Kakita was hoping to catch the vapor trail of a B-29 bomber. A sudden blast knocked him out.
LDP lawmaker Ken Saito
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 6, 2025

Japan ruling party heavyweight warns against BOJ rate hike

The remark highlights the political pressure the BOJ could face in resuming rate hikes as higher U.S. levies hurt corporate profits.
The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, is on display at the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Virginia after restoration in August 2003.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 6, 2025

Were the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings necessary?

Was it necessary to drop the bombs on civilian population centers to demonstrate the power of the weapons?
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the White House on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 7, 2025

The United States imposes 15% 'reciprocal' tariff on most Japanese goods

Japan and the U.S. still disagree on how the rate will be calculated.
Japan faces a demographic crisis that threatens its research talent and must build a more inclusive and welcoming society to attract and keep world-class scientists amid rising nationalism and economic challenges.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 7, 2025

Japan gets serious about attracting world-class researchers

The stakes are high: Without a cultural shift, even the best-funded policies may fail to secure Japan’s future.
The government revised its real growth projection for fiscal year 2025 to 0.7%, down from the previous forecast of 1.2%.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 8, 2025

Japan lowers this year’s growth forecast as tariffs kick in

The downgrade partly reflects a darkening global economic outlook as a result of U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies.
Noe Ito (third from right) was editor-in-chief of feminist magazine Seito and her partner Sakae Osugi (second from right) was a prominent anarchist of the Taisho Era. Both were murdered by military police in 1923.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Aug 16, 2025

Taisho Democracy: A turbulent, tenuous era of conflicting ideals

The resilience of Japanese politics, culture and society were tested during the 14 years of the Taisho Era (1912-26).
Shinto priests holding traditional umbrellas walk to the main shrine for a ritual to cleanse themselves during the annual Spring Festival at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo in April 2016.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 13, 2025

Dispelling the myth of Yasukuni Shrine

The shrine has been a lightning rod — especially as it has been used by some of Japan's neighbors as a convenient means to shift attention away from their domestic issues.
Setsuko Kawai, who lost her mother and two younger brothers in the March 1945 bombing, has fought for recognition of the victims.
JAPAN / History / FOCUS
Aug 14, 2025

Civilian air raid survivors fight for recognition 80 years after war's end

After drafting a bill to provide concrete relief to survivors this spring, a bipartisan group of lawmakers failed to submit it to parliament days before the session’s closure.
The streets of Tokyo's Ginza district in April. The number of foreign residents in Japan hit a record high at 3.76 million as of the end of last year, comprising just over 3% of the population.
BUSINESS
Aug 14, 2025

Welcoming foreign residents benefits Japan, three quarters of economists say

Some highlighted the need to avoid conflating foreign nationals who may be in Japan temporarily with long-term foreign residents.
A U.S. Marine Corps MV-22 Osprey aircraft flies over the island of Okinawa in March 2018.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 14, 2025

Precautionary Osprey landings signal safety, not alarm

Two precautionary V-22 Osprey landings in northern Honshu demonstrated the aircraft’s safety and its role in enhancing Japan’s rapid-deployment and island-defense capabilities.
Lawmakers from both chambers of Japan's parliament who are members of a league of parliamentarians promoting Yasukuni Shrine visits walk inside the shrine in Tokyo on Friday.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2025

Cabinet ministers Koizumi and Kato visit Yasukuni Shrine

The visits marked the sixth consecutive year a Cabinet minister has visited the war-related shrine on the anniversary.
U.K. Prime Miniter Keir Starmer speaks at the Jaguar Land Rover automobile manufacturing plant in Solihull, U.K. Starmer declared in May that his trade deal with U.S. President Donald Trump included a cut in U.S. tariffs on British steel to zero.
BUSINESS / Markets
Aug 18, 2025

Trade partners grow restless waiting for Trump’s tariff breaks

While deals have been cut, the lower tariff rates agreed have yet to kick in.
The area around Shibuya Station in Tokyo. After the end of World War II, population concentration in the capital accelerated while other parts of Japan continue to see population declines.
JAPAN / FOCUS
Aug 18, 2025

80 years on: Tokyo prospers while local revitalization still insufficient

Experts stress the importance of setting up a system in which industrial resources are circulated locally in order to create a sustainable society.
Workations were a burgeoning trend in the corporate world for years before the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged it.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 19, 2025

Tokyo crowned No.1 'workation' spot

Japan’s capital topped the rankings for its “exceptional broadband speeds, transport infrastructure, safety, culture, and new digital nomad visa.”
Exports fell 2.6% in value in July from a year earlier, posting the biggest downturn since February 2021, led by cars, auto parts and steel.
BUSINESS / Economy
Aug 20, 2025

Japan’s exports tumble most in four years as U.S. tariff pain intensifies

Exports fell 2.6% in value from a year earlier, sliding more than the median forecast of a 2.1% decline, the Finance Ministry has reported.
Seri Yanai and Daniel Wishes founded the shadow puppetry company Mochinosha in 2012 when they were students at the London School of Puppetry.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Aug 22, 2025

Seri Yanai: ‘We mix modern and analog to create something new’

The co-founder of Mochinosha, a shadow puppetry company based in Saitama Prefecture, talks about her journey to the stage and her artistic inspirations.
Kazuhiro Nomura, president of BK Japan Holdings, which operates Burger King in Japan
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 21, 2025

Big burgers and bigger ambitions for Japan's Burger King

The fast-food chain has grown fourfold in just six years.
Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Aug 22, 2025

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

One man’s experience traces the capital's arc from wartime devastation to modern megacity in a story of resilience and reinvention.
Hikers on a trail in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture. As extreme heat continues to grip Japan, a tectonic shift may be underway in the nation’s summer tourism scene as more people gravitate toward cooler destinations.
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change / OUR PLANET
Aug 24, 2025

Are 'coolcations' the answer for Japan's heat-weary tourists?

Those in the travel industry are working to advertise cooler destinations, amid the prospect that the heat may prompt people to give up on traveling in the summer altogether.
People hold Taiwanese flags during the event to commemorate the end of World War II at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall on Aug. 16.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics / FOCUS
Aug 25, 2025

Taiwan and China battle it out in competing World War II narratives

Both sides are claiming credit for the victory over Japan.
Mercedes-Benz Japan opens its first 150-kilowatt fast-charging station in a park in Chiba in July.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Aug 25, 2025

Foreign EVs hit Japan alongside fast-charging network push

As Japanese automakers remain reluctant to shift away from popular hybrids, foreign rivals are challenging the status quo.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo