Weather

A heat wave continued to scorch Japan on Monday, with some regions seeing temperatures hitting record highs for the year. Temperatures topped 39 degrees in Ibi gawa and Tajimi in Gifu Prefecture in western Japan. The mercury climbed above 38 in eastern and central regions, according to the Meteor...

The toll for this weekend's heat wave rose to eight dead and 2,000 injured Sunday after two people died in Shiga and Saga prefectures, a Kyodo News tally showed. Temperatures rose above 35 in many parts of Japan, with the high for the day logged as 38.8 in Fukuchiyama, Kyoto Prefecture, and in th...

Seventy percent of the people killed by the torrential rain in western Japan this month were 60 or older, tallies show. Of 169 fatalities identified as of Sunday evening, 118 were 60 or older and six were under 10. The downpours began on July 5, triggering massive flooding and hundreds of landsli...

The government plans to designate the torrential rain that wreaked havoc in western Japan as a disaster of extreme severity so subsidies for reconstruction projects in the affected areas can be increased, it was learned Sunday. At the daily meeting of the disaster response headquarters in Toky...

A heat wave had killed at least six people and hospitalized more than 1,500 others across the nation Saturday as a three-day weekend got underway, a Kyodo News tally showed. The deaths occurred in six prefectures: Toyama, Shizuoka, Tottori, Hiroshima, Oita and Kumamoto, which saw temperatures ...

A cram school in the Mabicho district of Kurashiki, Okayama Prefecture, has reopened to accept both its own students and others whose schools were damaged by the region's deadly rains this month. In the wake of the disaster, the city's education board decided to keep 15 schools from kindergart...

About 5,900 people were still at shelters as of Friday night, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency, a week after special storm warnings were issued in eight prefectures in western and southwestern Japan. The death toll from floods and landslides caused by the rain has reached 209 ...

Thousands of volunteers began streaming into western Japan on Saturday to spend the three-day weekend helping flood-hit residents clean up their mud-caked homes and neighborhoods. The governments of hard-hit Ehime, Hiroshima and Okayama prefectures said they expect some 18,000 volunteers to ar...

Disasters stir a desire to help, and the record-breaking rains that triggered massive flooding in western Japan — killing 200 people and inflicting widespread destruction — have prompted groups of volunteers to take action, seeking to offer rapid assistance to communities hit by the calamity. ...

Residents in Uwajima, Ehime Prefecture, are mourning the loss of a well-loved member of their community this week, in the wake of downpours and flooding that killed at least 200 across western Japan. Hidefumi Izumi, 64, was known for his reliability and dedicated service to the local community...