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September 01, 2025
 

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HEALTH

Emperor Emeritus Akihito is accompanied by Empress Emerita Michiko as he travels to the University of Tokyo Hospital on Monday.
JAPAN / Society
Jul 14, 2025
Japan's Emperor Emeritus admitted to hospital to begin new heart treatment
Dosage for the new treatment will be decided after the 91-year-old former emperor undergoes an electrocardiogram.
The health ministry is expected to cut the official price of lecanemab, an Alzheimer's drug codeveloped by Japanese drugmaker Eisai and Biogen of the United States, by up to 15% from the current level of about ¥3 million per patient a year.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 10, 2025
Japan to cut price of Alzheimer's drug lecanemab
The health ministry is expected to cut the official price of the drug by up to 15% from the current level of about ¥3 million per patient a year.
In an effort to move past its troubled legacy, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical has replaced its president twice and appointed an external chairman.
BUSINESS / Companies / FOCUS
Jul 8, 2025
Despite leadership changes, Kobayashi Pharma still struggling with reform
The Osaka-based company has replaced its president twice and appointed an external chairman, seeking to reduce the influence of the founding family seen as a cause of the scandal.
BRICS leaders including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa (front row left), Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (second left), Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (center), Chinese Premier Li Qiang (second right) and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov join hands during a group photo at the bloc's summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jul 8, 2025
BRICS fills soft-power vacuum as Trump-led U.S. retreats
The 10-nation BRICS grouping of major emerging economies has stepped up its efforts on issues such as AI, health care and climate change.
A breakthrough HIV prevention drug, lenacapavir, offers hope to end the epidemic, but U.S. President Donald Trump’s cuts to global health funding threaten access and rollout, especially in Africa where prevention efforts are already strained.  
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2025
When an HIV scientific breakthrough isn’t enough
Trump administration funding cuts and dismantling of USAID force a shift from HIV elimination back to treatment.
The U.S. and the world will become unhealthier and vast numbers of children may die now that Donald Trump’s health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has pulled funding from the global vaccine program GAVI. 
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2025
RFK Jr. is playing with babies’ lives
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cut to U.S. funding for GAVI risks lives globally and damages America’s international standing.
Masaru Sato says the ossuary at Matsuoka Hoyoen must be preserved even after residents are gone from the sanatorium.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Tohoku
Jul 7, 2025
Former Hansen’s disease patients shed light on history of discrimination
Although the prejudice against Hansen's disease patients brought on by past segregation policy persist, the memories of their hardships are now fading.
The World Health Organization has backed tobacco taxes and price rises for decades, and has called for taxes on alcohol and sugary drinks in recent years, but this is the first time it has suggested a target price rise for all three products.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 4, 2025
WHO pushes countries to raise prices on sugary drinks, alcohol and tobacco by 50%
The move by the United Nations health agency is the strongest backing yet for taxes to help tackle chronic public health problems.
Cases of cancer patients and doctors having conversations about where the patient wanted to spend his or her last days came to 52.9% in 2021, up from 35.7% in the previous survey.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 3, 2025
About half of people who died from cancer discussed last days with doctors
About 60% of cancer patients were able to spend their last days at places where they wished to be, a report has shown.
A malnourished child reacts while a health care worker takes his vitals at Tudun Gambo Primary Health Care Center, Tudun Gambo, Nigeria, in May. Programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development are estimated to have helped prevent more than 91 million deaths over the past two decades, including 30 million among children.
WORLD / Politics
Jul 1, 2025
Trump’s plan for USAID cuts risks 14 million additional deaths, study warns
Researchers project 1.8 million excess deaths in 2025 alone if the cuts continue.
Takuya Nakagawa, a physical therapist at Anamizu General Hospital, checks on residents in a temporary housing unit in Anamizu, Ishikawa Prefecture, on June 20.
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2025
Noto’s elderly residents face higher medical costs after 2024 quake
The trend has raised questions about how an effective support system can be set up for residents, whose prolonged displacement is also wearing them down mentally.
Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization team tasked with investigating the origins of COVID-19, in Wuhan, China, in February 2021.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 28, 2025
WHO says all COVID-19 origin theories still open, after inconclusive study
The global catastrophe killed an estimated 20 million people, according to the WHO, while shredding economies and crippling health systems.
The leading cause of workers experiencing work-related mental health issues was power harassment, or an abuse of authority from superiors, which accounted for 224 cases.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jun 26, 2025
Work-related mental health cases hit record high in Japan
The leading cause of such cases was power harassment, or an abuse of authority from superiors.
The incubation period of “severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome” (SFTS) ranges from 6 days to 2 weeks, with symptoms including fever and diarrhea. It has a fatality rate of 27%.
JAPAN
Jun 25, 2025
Tick-borne disease cases, with one death, confirmed in Kanto region
Of particular concern is SFTS, which is primarily transmitted through ticks infected with the virus and has a fatality rate of 27%.
A worker checks sunscreen products during the final manufacturing process at a factory for the Japanese chemical and cosmetics company Kao in Odawara, Kanagawa Prefecture.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 23, 2025
Why Japanese sunscreen is going viral — and selling out
Japanese skincare is getting its moment in the sun thanks to the help of beauty influencers on YouTube and other social media platforms.
Economic losses in Japan stemming from workers' mental or physical disorders, linked to lower labor productivity, represent about 1% of the country's nominal gross domestic product for 2024.
BUSINESS
Jun 20, 2025
Annual economic losses from workers' health issues reach ¥7.6 trillion
The losses, linked to lower labor productivity, represent about 1% of the country's nominal gross domestic product for 2024.
By pioneering stem cell therapies, Japan is not only treating disease but also seeking to rejuvenate a nation grappling with aging and decline.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 20, 2025
Japan is helping lead the way in regenerative medicine
In pristine labs across Japan, scientists are tinkering with the architecture of regeneration.
Unicharm and Toyota Tsusho will together launch a company called Sofy East Africa in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in December to manufacture and sell sanitary products.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 19, 2025
Unicharm and Toyota Tsusho to set up sanitary goods joint venture in Kenya
The two companies aim to launch the new company, Sofy East Africa, in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi in December.
Researchers prepare medicine at a laboratory in Nanjing University in Nanjing, in China's Jiangsu province. China's share of global drug development is now nearly 30%.
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Jun 17, 2025
U.S. pharma bets big on China to snap up potential blockbuster drugs
Firms bet they can turn upfront payments of as little as $80 million into multibillion-dollar treatments.
The primary causes for long-term sick leave among women in their 20s included mental illness, such as depression and anxiety disorders, a survey has found.
JAPAN
Jun 16, 2025
Women in their 20s have higher rate of long-term sick leave, survey finds
The primary causes included mental illness, such as depression and anxiety disorders, as well as pregnancy-related problems.
Top Japan trade negotiator canceled U.S. trip over rice, report says
Ryosei Akazawa
‘Mount Fuji Lawson’ becomes a symbol of Japan’s overtourism problem
A couple poses for a wedding photo in front of a Lawson in the town of Kawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, on Aug. 25.
Philippine bid to acquire used Japanese warships gains steam
Tokyo is looking to transfer Abukuma-class vessels to the Philippines as part of broader efforts to boost the defense capabilities of like-minded neighbors amid growing Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
Japan to launch broad review of immigration policies amid rise in foreign nationals
Foreign tourists at Narita Airport in June. A report released Friday stresses that Japan is at a turning point and that current ad-hoc measures on immigration are no longer sufficient.
The Nobel Prize and a testy phone call: How the Trump-Modi relationship unraveled
U.S. President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi greet one another at the start of a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington in February.
Japan to launch broad review of immigration policies amid rise in foreign nationals
Foreign tourists at Narita Airport in June. A report released Friday stresses that Japan is at a turning point and that current ad-hoc measures on immigration are no longer sufficient.
Japan is warming up to tattoos — just not permanent ones
Tattoos have a complex history in Japan, but new types of temporary ink are letting locals curious about body art experiment without the commitment.
YouTube Music Weekend is where Japan’s internet-born performers go global
Headlining the second day of YouTube Music Weekend is Vocaloid artist Kikuo, who, with 1.46 million YouTube subscribers, is one of the most popular artists in the genre.
Japan looks to build drone ‘shield’ in record defense budget request
A group of Ground Self-Defense Force service members discuss drone operations and capabilities at a joint static display during the Orient Shield 24 opening ceremony at the Yausubetsu Training Area in Hokkaido in July last year.
Can anime carry the memories of World War II?
Many schools in Japan show "Grave of the Fireflies" as educational material to tell the emotionally grueling story of a boy who has no means to prevent his sister from starving to death.

Podcast

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

Longform

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.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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