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September 16, 2025
 

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LIFE

The estimated number of people age 65 or older in Japan stands at 36.19 million as of Monday, accounting for record 29.4% of the country's total population, according to the internal affairs ministry.
JAPAN / Society
Sep 15, 2025
Japan's elderly population down at around 36.2 million
The estimate, released ahead of Respect for the Aged Day on Monday, decreased for the first time in two years.
Juan Ansotegui walks on his property in Villalibado, a hamlet in the Odra-Pisuerga comarca of Burgos, Castile, Spain.
WORLD / Society
Sep 12, 2025
Spain wants to save rural areas — and it's finding creative ways to do it
Public and private actors are experimenting with ways to reverse demographic decline and save the centuries-old histories, traditions and cultures of Spain's rural communities.
Forbes and Unforgettable Travel Company have ranked Shirakawago in Gifu Prefecture as Asia's most beautiful village.
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2025
‘Fairytale’ Shirakawago ranked one of the world’s most beautiful villages
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Shirakawago is famed for its verdant landscape and gasshō-zukuri farmhouses, which are hundreds of years old.
Shigeko Kagawa, Japan's oldest person at 114, in Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture, on July 30
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2025
Aging Japan’s centenarian population nears 100,000
The number has grown steadily in recent years and comes as the birth rate continues to plummet.
People buy groceries from a mobile supermarket in a rural area of Nagomi, Kumamoto Prefecture. The government is considering a new "hometown resident" registration system to help strengthen regional revitalization measures.
JAPAN
Sep 7, 2025
Japan eyes two types of 'hometown resident' registration
The system is included in the government's basic vision for regional revitalization, adopted in June.
Russian President Vladimir Putin walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a military parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square on Wednesday.
WORLD / Science & Health / EXPLAINER
Sep 5, 2025
Could humans live forever, as Putin was heard telling Xi?
Maybe not, experts say, though serious research is increasingly revealing more about why we age — and how we could try to stop it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping after a group photograph before a military parade marking the 80th anniversary of victory over Japan and the end of World War II, in Beijing, on Wednesday.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 3, 2025
Hot mic catches Xi and Putin talking about organ transplants and immortality
The Chinese and Russian leaders, both 72, spoke of technology that could help humans live up to 150 years.
Four leading Japanese life insurance companies will stop sending employees on loan to agents and banks for insurance sales, following recent scandals involving these workers, sources revealed on Monday.
JAPAN
Aug 26, 2025
Japanese life insurers to stop transferring workers on loan
The move follows a series of scandals in which employees sent to sales agents leaked rival insurers' customer information.
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.
Oita Prefectural Kusu Miyama High School in the town of Kusu, Oita Prefecture
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Kyushu
Aug 4, 2025
Two Oita towns to launch program to nurture aspiring local teachers
As the towns are facing population decline, there are few young aspiring teachers there.
Brett Clark, Dai-ichi Life Holdings' senior managing executive officer in charge of the Asia-Pacific region
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 1, 2025
Japan’s Dai-ichi Life eyes M&A in Southeast Asia for growth
Japan’s biggest listed life insurer is looking at the Philippines and Malaysia as emerging markets that offer business opportunities as more households ascend to middle class.
Japan's oldest person, Miyoko Hiroyasu, died Tuesday at the age of 114, according to the health ministry.
JAPAN / Society
Jul 31, 2025
Japan's oldest person dies at 114
Miyoko Hiroyasu, from the city of Nakatsu in Oita Prefecture, was born in January 1911. She died on Tuesday.
The average life expectancy of Japanese citizens in 2024 is 81.09 years for men and 87.13 years for women, according to the health ministry.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 25, 2025
Japan's average life expectancy in 2024 almost unchanged from 2023, data shows
The life expectancy of Japanese men was sixth globally in 2024, while that of Japanese women remained in the top spot.
Fukoku Life Insurance has raised its local bond purchase target for the current fiscal year to several hundred billion yen from the initially planned ¥30 billion, and is focusing on Japanese government debt to capitalize on higher super-long-term interest rates.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 18, 2025
Fukoku Life plans to step up Japanese government bond purchases
The insurer's plan to purchase more Japanese super-long bonds comes amid concerns a defeat for the ruling coalition in the Upper House election may lead to looser fiscal policy.
Mod's memoir “Things Become Other Things” chronicles his walking trips across the Kii Peninsula, surveying “a graceful end to a certain life cycle.”
CULTURE / Books
Jul 16, 2025
Craig Mod's life in motion in a disappearing Japan
In “Things Become Other Things,” the longtime resident of Japan captures that grace that lingers in slowly vanishing countryside towns.
Shuhei Nakata, president of Nakata Kogei — a wooden-hanger maker in Toyooka, Hyogo Prefecture — says a revised work evaluation system and a strict policy against workplace harassment has helped to attract women to the company.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Fukushima
Jul 14, 2025
Fukushima looks to local initiatives to combat population decline
The measures will bring the area in line with other parts of Japan that are proactively trying to retain residents.
Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance's headquarters in Tokyo. Japanese life insurance companies are holding off on buying superlong-term Japanese government bonds as further interest rate hikes loom.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 8, 2025
Meiji Yasuda Life to shun superlong Japanese debt for year or more
The insurer is expecting the Bank of Japan to continue to raise rates.
Expectant parents Masataka and Saki Ohita look at ultrasound images of their unborn twins.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Fukushima
Jun 23, 2025
Childbirth facilities disappearing from Fukushima towns
With just 26 facilities in the prefecture that can handle deliveries, there is concern that the trend could accelerate population decline.
A registration system linking local governments with the so-called connected population — nonresidents who regularly interact with regional areas — is designed to encourage people living in urban areas to play active roles in rural communities amid their shrinking populations.
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 15, 2025
Japan considers new system to connect urban and rural populations
The system aims to help those in overpopulated cities to play more active roles in rural communities with shrinking populations.
Young women are moving from rural regions to Tokyo due to the lack of opportunities for education and employment, as well as the prevalence of stereotypical gender roles in their hometowns, a survey by the Cabinet Office last December found.
JAPAN
Jun 13, 2025
Citing lack of opportunities, young women in Japan are not returning to rural areas
The government also stressed in its 2025 white paper on gender equality the need to eliminate the "fixed sense of gender roles" in rural communities.
SDF spots China’s biggest aircraft carrier for first time
The Fujian aircraft carrier is seen in Shanghai in May 2024 as it leaves for its first sea trial.
Why more hotels in Japan are offering room-only service
Nipponia Hotel Ise Kawasaki Merchant Town in Ise, Mie Prefecture
Is America ready for Japanese-style 7-Elevens?
Convenience stores are a fixture of Japanese life and 7-Eleven, a chain that began in the U.S. in 1927, opened its first store in Japan in 1974 — and then became wholly Japanese-owned in 2005 through parent company Seven & I Holdings.
Final weeks of World Expo in Osaka likely to see large crowds
With one month left to go, crowds are expected to swell at the World Expo in Osaka during its final weeks.
Japan's elderly population down at around 36.2 million
The estimated number of people age 65 or older in Japan stands at 36.19 million as of Monday, accounting for record 29.4% of the country's total population, according to the internal affairs ministry.
Japan's major art events converge this fall
Shinji Ohmaki’s “Tokinokage” exhibited at Fuji Textile Week 2021 shows the use of fabric as art.
An aesthetic escape to Hakone’s art-drenched hills
Between traditional examples of fine art and sleek, modern exhibitions that blend with nature, Hakone offers a unique escape from Tokyo's urban sprawl.
Niinami’s ouster quick but not unusual as corporations protect reputation
Takeshi Niinami resigns as chairman and CEO of Suntory Holdings.
As Manila modernizes its military, new opportunities emerge for Tokyo
A Brahmos missile system is displayed during a rehearsal for a military parade in New Delhi in January. The Philippines will soon receive its second batch of the supersonic cruise missiles from India.
Shizuoka farmers fight to preserve sustainable tea method that’s steeped in tradition
As of August 2024, the number of confirmed chagusaba farmers had fallen to 302, just over half the 582 reported in 2015, according to the Shizuoka Chagusaba Farming Method Promotion Council.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’
By Alex K.T. Martin

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