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Naha, Okinawa Pref., Oct. 25 (Jiji Press)--Public prosecutors in Okinawa Prefecture indicted U.S. Marine Lance Cpl. Devin Jacob Ballard, 20, on Sunday on robbery and murder charges after a 39-year-old woman was found dead in the southwestern Japan prefecture earlier this month. According to the indictment and other sources, Ballard allegedly strangled the woman with a telephone cord in a ho...
Tokyo, Oct. 25 (Jiji Press)--Opposition party officials demanded Sunday that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi clearly explain her government's consumption tax cut legislation in the Diet herself. During a televised debate, opposition representatives questioned the lack of details about a planned benefit program included in the legislation, as well as the uncertain economic impact of c...
Nagoya, Oct. 24 (Jiji Press)--The 2026 Asian Para Games came to a close on Saturday after Japan, which hosted the para sports event for the first time, won a record 64 gold medals. At the Aichi-Nagoya Games, a total of about 3,000 athletes from 45 countries and regions competed in 18 sports, mainly in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan. The host nation won 186 total medals, finishing second on...
Tokyo, Oct. 24 (Jiji Press)--Japan's four major beer companies, suspected of price collusion, kept shipping prices unchanged after the 2023 tax cut of 19 yen per liter of beer, citing higher costs, it was learned on Saturday. Meanwhile, they all implemented a price hike of 20 yen per liter in 2025, according to informed sources. The Japan Fair Trade Commission is investigating a possible...
Japan’s centuries-old festivals are facing renewed scrutiny after a series of fatal accidents in recent weeks, raising questions over how communities can preserve their cultural traditions without putting lives at risk. Three people have been killed and more than a dozen injured in accidents at autumn festivals across the country in recent weeks. Meanwhile, organisers of another major festival, where two men died in February, have cancelled next year’s event, citing public safety concerns. The...
Tokyo, Oct. 24 (Jiji Press)--Japan's revised Imperial House Law came into effect Saturday, allowing male, paternal-line descendants of former Imperial Family branches to be adopted into the Imperial Family, and female Imperial Family members to remain within the family after marriage. The government has stressed the significance of the law in addressing the declining number of Imperial Fami...
Tokyo, Oct. 23 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese and South Korean governments have been unable to identify five sets of remains found at an undersea mine in western Japan where a fatal flooding accident occurred during World War II, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said Friday. The accident took place at the Chosei coal mine in Ube, Yamaguchi Prefecture, on Feb. 3, 1942, killing 136 people from the K...
Tokyo, Oct. 23 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Princess Aiko, the daughter of Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako, will visit Singapore on Nov. 17-21, the government said Friday. Princess Aiko was invited by Singaporean President Tharman Shanmugaratnam as this year marks the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The trip will be the princess' second official overseas ...
Tokyo, Oct. 23 (Jiji Press)--Renowned Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami died Saturday. He was 74. Murakami, born in Nagasaki Prefecture, southwestern Japan, was known for his works such as "Almost Transparent Blue" and "Coin Locker Babies." In 1976, Murakami won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for his debut novel "Almost Transparent Blue," which he wrote ...
Tokyo, Oct. 23 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese government highlighted the urgent need to fundamentally strengthen the country's energy supply-and-demand structure to prepare for future emergencies in its fiscal 2025 white paper on energy, adopted at a cabinet meeting on Friday. The white paper noted that, in response to the deterioration in the Middle East situation, Japan was the first in the w...
Japan’s key price gauge rose above the Bank of Japan’s target level for the first time this year, supporting the case for a widely expected BOJ interest rate hike in December.
With one eye on her baby in a stroller, Minae Kamata operates an arcade machine in a Tokyo suburb, manipulating a claw to grab not a stuffed toy but a pack of toilet paper. As inflation weighs on Japanese households, huge arcades on the outskirts of major cities are installing claw machines filled with eggs, rice, laundry detergent and other necessities. The “shop-and-play destinations” merge essential buying with entertainment so that families do not feel a choice between bringing home the...
Tokyo, Oct. 22 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese government, in a rare move, has repeatedly urged people to take precautions after critical vulnerabilities were detected in the PHP programming language, which is widely used for websites. The moves reflected concerns that a delayed response could deal a blow to the economy and society, especially given the recent string of personal data breaches ca...
Tokyo, Oct. 22 (Jiji Press)--Japan will switch to a post-departure refund system for consumption tax for travelers from abroad on Nov. 1, following a series of cases in which purchased tax-free goods were resold in Japan at prices including tax. Foreign visitors can currently buy goods at prices excluding the consumption tax at tax-free shops in Japan. Under the new system, which is inte...
An electricity symposium in Tokyo this week was crowded with global investors looking to make money.
Tokyo, Oct. 22 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese government will cut its subsidies for the purchase of eco-friendly vehicles, including electric and fuel-cell vehicles, to 60-80 pct of their current levels next year, the industry ministry said Wednesday. The reduced subsidies will apply to cars registered from Jan. 1. The ministry is expected to temporarily stop accepting subsidy applications a...
Tokyo, Oct. 22 (Jiji Press)--Japan's National Police Agency plans to introduce cashless payments for minor traffic violations from July 2027, allowing offenders, including cyclists, to pay fines by credit card, smartphone payment services or other cashless means, agency officials said Thursday. The system will be rolled out nationwide in phases. The agency will solicit bids for a contractor...
Tokushima, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--Tokushima prefectural police arrested on Wednesday four Japanese men who have been detained by Vietnamese authorities for their alleged involvement in a special fraud scheme operating from a base in the Southeast Asian country. The fraud suspects, aged between 27 and 61, were sent to Japan by air. They include Masami Maegawa, a 61-year-old self-proclaimed co...
Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's administration has steadily delivered on its promises to the public over the past year, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said Wednesday, the first anniversary of her taking office. "We have worked boldly to build a strong economy and establish strong diplomacy and national security, steadily delivering on what we pro...
Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--The estimated number of foreign visitors to Japan in September dropped 5.0 pct from a year earlier to 3,103,700, the Japan National Tourism Organization said Wednesday. The decline reflected rising airfares due to a deterioration in the situation in the Middle East and typhoon-caused flight cancellations. The cumulative number of such visitors in the January-...
Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--Personal information on some 125,000 police officers and staff members in Japan may have been compromised following unauthorized access to cloud service operator Arcadia Inc., National Police Agency officials said Wednesday. Over 18,000 email addresses of citizens and companies registered for a security notification service may have been exposed as well. Twen...
Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--Japanese new agriculture minister Arata Takebe on Wednesday apologized over a weekly magazine report about his alleged receipt of a political donation from a public works contractor. "I instructed relevant officials to promptly investigate the facts and take action to return the money or correct the political funds disclosure report accordingly," Takebe told rep...
Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--Major Japanese banks are increasingly shifting their identity verification methods for applicants to open accounts online to scanning of integrated circuit chip-embedded cards, following a series of data breaches. Japan will enforce in April 2027 new regulations under the revised law to prevent the transfer of criminal proceeds, requiring financial institutions a...
Tokyo, Oct. 21 (Jiji Press)--The Japanese government has announced a plan to provide Malaysia's navy with a counterdrone system under its official security assistance framework to provide defense equipment free of charge to like-minded countries. Under the plan, announced Tuesday, the government will spend 1,650 million yen on the system, marking its third provision of OSA to Malaysia. F...
Tokyo, Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan's Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center, or LSTC, whose members include chipmaker Rapidus Corp., and other entities said Tuesday that they will jointly develop an artificial intelligence-based medical image-processing system. The project members, also including Hokkaido University and Fujifilm Corp., aim to realize real-time image processing required...
Tokyo, Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--Japan's education ministry on Tuesday urged the University of Tokyo to review whether the selection process for its next president was appropriate, in response to doubts raised both within and outside the school. This marked the first time the ministry has requested a university to verify the new president selection process. Tetsuo Goda, director-general of t...
Tokyo, Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--A Chinese artificial intelligence tool called Artex is likely to have been used in cyberattacks targeting Japanese companies, an investigation by a Japanese cybersecurity business has found. GMO Cybersecurity by Ierae Inc., a subsidiary of GMO Internet Group Inc., traced cyberattacks targeting Japanese companies to six servers, all of which used Artex, an AI-pow...
Tokyo, Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--The personnel commissions of Japan's 47 prefectures have recommended higher monthly salaries and bonuses for prefectural government employees for fiscal 2026, a survey showed Tuesday. It marked the fifth consecutive year that all prefectural commissions have made such recommendations. If the hikes are implemented as recommended, the average annual salary will...
Anna Edwards, Guy Johnson, and Paul Dobson break down today's key themes for analysts and investors on "Bloomberg: The Opening Trade." (Source: Bloomberg)
Tsu, Mie Pref., Oct. 20 (Jiji Press)--Tsu District Court on Tuesday sentenced a former truck driver to seven years in prison for an expressway crash that killed six people, including three children, in Mie Prefecture, western Japan, in March. The seven-year sentence for Mitsuyo Mizutani, 55, came as requested by the prosecution. According to the ruling, Mizutani was driving a truck at ab...