カテゴリー: Japan
Fifty-five years since Osaka last hosted, rocks from Mars, domestic androids and artificial hearts are part of showcase on ‘unloved’ islandAs clunky as it sounds, “designing a future society for our lives” isn’t a bad ambition for the world in these tr…
Pint at the pub, vinegar on fish and chips, and Welsh national anthem are all part of a day’s diplomacy for Hiroshi SuzukiHiroshi Suzuki’s connection with the UK started in the 1990s when he started to visit friends of his wife in south-west England.Ba…
Japan unveils first plan to evacuate 100,000 civilians from islands near Taiwan in event of conflict
Prospect of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan has forced Japan to step up measures to protect islands in Okinawa prefecture Japan has for the first time released plans to evacuate more than 100,000 civilians from some of its remote islands near Taiwan in th…
Assassination of former Japanese prime minister in 2022 spurred official request for South Korean-based sect to be closedA court in Japan has ordered the Unification Church to be dissolved after a government request that was spurred by the investigatio…
Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest serving death row prisoner, had been wrongly convicted of a quadruple murderA Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4m in compensation, an of…
Planned missiles on Kyushu said to be part of ‘counterstrike capabilities’, as fears grow over US security pactJapan is planning to deploy long-range missiles on its southern island of Kyushu amid concerns around the Trump administration’s stance towar…
More people were killed in the 1945 attack than the atomic bombing of Nagasaki a few months later, but there is no national memorial, accurate death toll or compensation for survivorsNot even the passage of eight decades has dimmed Shizuko Nishio’s mem…
Known by his fighting moniker, Aonishiki Arata, the Ukrainian wrestler recently won promotion to sumo’s highest level in JapanDanylo Yavhusishyn arrived in Japan in April 2022 as a teenage refugee from the war in Ukraine, unable to speak a word of the …
Shitsui Hakoishi can still cut it as a barber in her salon in the town of Nakagawa, after earning her licence in 1936A 108-year-old Japanese woman has been named the world’s oldest female barber, nine decades after she first started cutting hair profes…
Firefighters are struggling to contain a wildfire in north-east Japan which has been burning for seven days. A number of homes have been burned in a small coastal town near Ofunato city in Iwate prefecture, and thousands of people have been evacuatedLa…
Blaze in Ofunato has spread through 2,100 hectares of land, damaged dozens of homes and forced more than 1,000 to fleeAuthorities in Japan have warned that the country’s biggest wildfire in decades is likely to spread, after it damaged dozens of homes …
More than a thousand people have been evacuated near forest of Ofunato in northern region of IwateMore than a thousand people have been evacuated as Japan battles its largest wildfire in more than three decades.The flames are estimated to have spread o…
Hydrogen sulphide gives Takayu Onsen its unmistakable sulphurous smell but can be dangerous if inhaled in high enough concentrationsThree people have died in north-east Japan in an accident that authorities suspect is linked to the inhalation of deadly…
Agriculture minister says rising prices have ‘had a significant impact on people’s lives’ amid record heat, surges in demand and distribution problemsJapan is to flood the market with almost a quarter of a million tonnes of stockpiled rice in an unprec…
Women are traditionally expected to buy chocolates for male colleagues on Valentine’s Day but teenage boys are shunning the one-sided customIt has been several years since Japanese women first signalled their contempt for the long tradition of showerin…