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September 24, 2025
 

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CHILDREN

Marriage is rapidly declining in South Korea as rising education and career aspirations collide with traditional gender norms.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2025
South Korea’s baby bust threatens its demographic future
At 1.2 births per woman, Japan is still reproducing faster than South Korea, where the birth rate has dropped to just 0.75 — the lowest in the world.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spent decades promoting vaccine misinformation, including the widely debunked claim that the MMR shot causes autism.
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 19, 2025
RFK Jr. panelists make initial changes to childhood vaccine schedule
The vote against the MMRV shot comes as public health experts fear more changes that flout prevailing medical advice are in the pipeline.
Save the Children Japan domestic program chief Sonoko Kawakami speaks at a news conference in Tokyo in July. A survey conducted by the group in June has found that over 90% of low-income households with children face food insecurity.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 17, 2025
Over 90% of low-income families in Japan struggling to feed children
A survey conducted by Save the Children Japan has found that single-parent households were among those facing the most dire food insecurity.
Children stand near a nursery in Belgorod, Russia, on Aug. 26.
WORLD
Sep 16, 2025
Russia expanding forced re-education of deported Ukrainian children
U.S.-funded research has identified more than 210 sites where Ukrainian children have been taken for military training, drone manufacturing and other forced re-education.
High school baseball players line up during the opening ceremony of Summer Koshien last month.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Sep 16, 2025
Japanese baseball grapples with shrinking player base
Behind the buzz created by Shohei Ohtani lies a troubling reality: The number of young players in Japan has fallen sharply in recent years.
Police issued third arrest warrants on Thursday for two elementary school teachers involved in an online chat group that shared secretly taken images and videos of girls.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 12, 2025
Teachers arrested for allegedly sharing images of girls face more charges
The total number of children victimized by the group has risen to at least 25, according to the police.
The number of children who died from abuse totaled 65 in Japan in fiscal 2023, down by seven from the preceding year, according to the government.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 11, 2025
Japan records 65 child abuse deaths in fiscal 2023
The number is down by seven from the preceding year, according to the Children and Families Agency.
Tom Riches, whose firefighter brother was killed when the Trade Centers fell, and his son Tommy, 10, at the family home in Brooklyn on Sept. 5.
WORLD / Society
Sep 11, 2025
A new 9/11 generation: These children promise to never forget
They have no memory of the Sept. 11 attacks but are increasingly shouldering the responsibility to carry it on.
Omar Abu Kuwaik, a 6-year-old Gazan child who lost an arm, gestures as six Gazan families with wounded children arrive at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport for medical treatment in Beirut, Lebanon, on Sept. 2
WORLD
Sep 11, 2025
Missing limbs and loved ones, Gazan children begin treatment abroad
At least 45,000 children have been wounded in Gaza, many of them suffering life-changing injuries, according to UNICEF.
East Asia’s fertility plunge is driven not just by financial costs but by perfectionist cultural expectations that burden parents with intense educational and social demands.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 5, 2025
‘Confugenics’ and East Asia's demographic crisis
The numbers are staggering when you dig into them. Parents in Japan covered half of higher education costs in 2024 — more than double the OECD average.
Sayaka Togitani's daughter Hinami was delivered via emergency cesarean section but suffered fetal hypoxia, which left her with a severe disability.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 3, 2025
Family calls for daughter born after car accident to be recognized as a victim
The family of a pregnant woman who died after being hit by a car wants the daughter, born afterward with a severe disability, to be deemed a victim.
The annual number of babies in Japan has been on a downward trend since around 1975, falling below 1 million in 2016, 900,000 in 2019 and 800,000 in 2022.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 29, 2025
Japan births hit fresh low in first half of 2025
The January-June figure, including babies born to foreign nationals living in Japan and Japanese nationals living overseas, stood below 400,000 for the fourth consecutive year.
The number of children on nursery waiting lists decreased to a record low as of April 1, reflecting a decrease in births.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 29, 2025
Kids on nursery waiting lists down for eighth year amid falling births
As of April this year, there were 2,254 children on waiting lists, down from a high of 26,081 in 2017.
The Justice Ministry has drafted an ordinance proposing a legally mandated post-divorce child support amount of ¥20,000 per child per month, sources said.
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2025
Statutory post-divorce child support to be set at ¥20,000 a month
According to a 2021 welfare ministry survey, only 28.1% of single-mother households and 8.7% of single-father households had actually received child support from the other parents.
Mourners visit a memorial near the Annunciation Church in Minneapolis on Thursday, where a shooting took place the day before.
WORLD
Aug 29, 2025
Minneapolis children revealed courage, absorbed fear during church shooting
The shooter killed two children and wounded 18 teachers and children, including a child taken to hospital in critical condition.
Some 93.1% of Japanese teenagers who struggle with school life said they felt like they “wanted to disappear from the world" at the end of summer vacation ahead of the start of a new term, according to a recent survey released by Yokohama-based nonprofit Daisan Kazoku.
JAPAN / Society
Aug 28, 2025
Most Japanese teens struggling with school find end of summer ‘painful’
In a recent survey, 93.1% of respondents said they felt they “wanted to disappear from the world.”
A malnourished Palestinian child gets a checkup at a medical point run by a local nongovernmental organization affiliated with the primary health care of the Palestinian health ministry in al-Mawasi, in the southern Gaza Strip district of Khan Younis, on Aug. 13.
WORLD
Aug 28, 2025
Starving Gaza children too weak to cry, Save the Children head says
The United Nations officially declared famine in the Gaza Strip on Friday, blaming what it called Israel's systematic obstruction of aid during more than 22 months of war.
The Financial Services Agency plans to expand Japan's Nippon Individual Savings Account tax exemption program for small investments, with a focus on supporting families with children.
BUSINESS
Aug 27, 2025
Financial Services Agency eyeing NISA expansion to support child-rearing
The FSA will call for a revision of the age limit for installment-type investments under the NISA program.
Begum, a 35-year-old mother of seven children, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on Aug. 18. Begum will marry off one of her daughters after a funding shortage shuttered thousands of schools in the refugee camps.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Aug 25, 2025
School closures push Rohingya refugee children into marriage and work
A funding crisis has led to the suspension of many Rohingya learning centers, leaving children to play in the mud or rain.
China’s demographic spiral is now resembling that of ancient Rome, where changing social norms and drastic population-control measures led to falling birth rates and irreversible decline.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 9, 2025
What ancient Rome can teach China about demographic collapse
China’s situation, however, is particularly perilous. Unless it is reversed, a demographic decline of this magnitude could recall the collapse of the Roman Empire.
South Korea’s baby bust threatens its demographic future
Marriage is rapidly declining in South Korea as rising education and career aspirations collide with traditional gender norms.
German companies choosing Japan as Asia manufacturing hub: survey
Japan has many positive qualities for German companies, but the market does face some challenges, such as talent acquisition and retention, particularly as demand for skilled workers grows, a survey by the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Japan showed.
The Japanese face and body patches that have had the world wondering
Japan's Mebuki Suzuki in action with Uganda's Oscar Chelimo in the men's 10,000 meter final at the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo on Sept. 14
Abuse of 'zombie cigarettes' among Okinawa youths raises alarm
A street in Naha in August. In entertainment districts in southern Okinawa, a drug known as "laughing gas vape" is being abused at nightclubs and bar. Now, some establishments have put up warning notices.
Twice-a-year injection could make HIV prevention easier, developer argues
Jared Baeten, Gilead Sciences' senior vice president and virology therapeutic area head, hopes regulatory approval elsewhere for lenacapavir as a preexposure prophylaxis — for reducing the risk of contracting HIV — could lead to real discussions toward ending HIV in Japan.
Who’s who in the LDP presidential race?
(Clockwise from top left) Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi; former foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi; Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Shinjiro Koizumi; former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi; and former minister of state for economic security Sanae Takaichi
Aichi Triennale’s message from the world: Free Palestine
“Between Currents and Bloom,” an eye-popping crocheted seascape by Indonesian artist Mulyana, dazzles with Instagram-ready cuteness while recalling a vibrant ocean now threatened by warming seas.
Twice-a-year injection could make HIV prevention easier, developer argues
Jared Baeten, Gilead Sciences' senior vice president and virology therapeutic area head, hopes regulatory approval elsewhere for lenacapavir as a preexposure prophylaxis — for reducing the risk of contracting HIV — could lead to real discussions toward ending HIV in Japan.
Behold the glory of Japan’s fruit boxes
Otherwise common sights in Japan's supermarkets, the country's fruit and veggie boxes can hide surprising symbols of local pride.
YouTuber Gigguk shifts from talking anime to making anime
The process of making “Baan” was personal and enlightening for Maneetapho, who spent years talking about anime on his YouTube channel and podcast before making the jump to becoming an anime creator himself.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

"Shake hands with Lima-chan," a statue that shares the name of the Peruvian capital looks in the direction of Peru, where a sister statue, "Sakura-chan," is located. Erected in Yokohama's Rinko Park in 1999, it commemorates Peruvian-Japanese friendship.
The journey of Peru’s Nikkei: Finding identity in Japan
By Christoph Sponsel

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