カテゴリー: Japan
Iwao Hakamada, 88, who spent longer than anyone in the world awaiting execution, awaits murder retrial verdictIn the early hours of 30 June 1966 a fire swept through the home of the managing director of a miso maker in Shizuoka, central Japan. After th…
The 12-metre high machine has coke bottle eyes and a crude Wall-E-like head, as well as large arms that can be fitted with blades or paint brushesIt resembles an enormous, malevolent robot from 1980s sci-fi but West Japan Railway’s new humanoid employe…
Japan’s supreme court rules that practice under now-defunct eugenics law was unconstitutionalJapan’s supreme court has ordered the government to pay damages to dozens of people who were forcibly sterilised under a now-defunct eugenics law, saying the p…
Pyongyang calls large-scale ‘Freedom Edge’ drills involving fighter jets and nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier ‘provocative’North Korea has criticised a joint military exercise by South Korea, Japan and the US held this month, state media has said, s…
Conservative Yuriko Koike is seeking a third term with leftist Renho Murata her main challenger as the city grapples with falling birth rateThe race to become Tokyo’s next governor has kicked off, with two women in the lead to run the world’s most popu…
Yamanashi prefecture brings in modest hiking fee to stop ‘bullet climbing’ and address safety concernsA crowd-control gate has been installed halfway up Mount Fuji before the start of this year’s climbing season on 1 July, but the governor of Yamanashi…
US wants show of strength with planned sanctions for helping Russia, but group will also discuss migration, Middle East and AIA dramatic expansion of entities exposed to US sanctions for helping the Russian economy and an EU-led $50bn loan to ease the …
A developer in Japan just built a 10-storey apartment block in Tokyo but then decided to tear it down. What is going on?Japanese artist Hokusai famously produced a series of woodblock prints titled Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, and centuries later, t…
Although women are helping to address a desperate labour shortage, they face resistance in a sector dominated by menWith one last heave, Mayumi Okada launches a heavy, sopping wet rope into the Pacific Ocean. As a fresh afternoon wind forms frothy cre…
Holidaymakers were behaving appallingly around a convenience store that offers an Instagrammable view of the mountain – until residents blocked the camerasName: Mount Fuji.Age: Formed 100,000 years ago. Continue reading…
Yonaguni is a tourist hotspot – but its location just 100km from Taiwan means residents must wrestle with the creeping militarisation of their homeIn the minds of many Japanese people, Yonaguni is a sleepy paradise of crystal-clear sea and pristine bea…
Hotline set up in Japan’s capital to report sightings of raccoons, which became popular as pets after success of 1970s TV anime seriesHaving won the battle to tackle Tokyo’s population of giant, ravenous crows, the city’s authorities are now embroiled …
Organised in a deliberately loose fashion, tokuryū pose fresh problems for police, as years of crackdowns see the appeal of a yakuza life fadeWatching three masked men smash their way into a luxury watch shop in Tokyo’s upmarket Ginza district in broad…