October 29, 2025

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JAPAN

History

Science & Health

Hideki Shirakawa, a professor emeritus at the University of Tsukuba, became the second Japanese person to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry in October 2000.

JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By

Oct 1, 2025

Japan Times 2000: Japanese professor wins Nobel Prize in chemistry

Hideki Shirakawa received the Nobel Prize in October 2000 along with two American scientists for their revolutionary work on conductive polymers.

Hisao Ito, a former resident of Tinian in the Mariana Islands, points to himself in a family photo taken when he was a child.

JAPAN / History

Sep 24, 2025

World War II survivor bears witness to family tragedy in Tinian mass suicide

Eighty-one years after the mass suicide, the memory of his father killing two of his sisters remains lodged in the survivor's mind, yet he holds no grudge against his father.

In the “Kojiki,” the origins of the Japanese archipelago are attributed to the coupling of Izanagi and Izanami, two kami from the Plain of High Heaven.

JAPAN / History / The Living Past

Sep 20, 2025

Humanity's tales of creation, cataclysm and kami

By Michael Hoffman

Cultures the world over have invented their own distinctive creation myths since antiquity. In Japan, the “Kojiki” offers insight into premodern perspectives on the nation.

Yasuhiko Ito speaks of his experience as an internee under the Soviet Union after World War II, in the city of Fukuoka in April, prior to his death in May at the age of 100.

JAPAN / History

Sep 17, 2025

Former Japanese internee in Ukraine pained by Russian invasion

After World War II, Yasuhiko Ito was taken as a disarmed soldier of the Imperial Japanese Army by the former Soviet Union to Ukraine for forced labor.

Prime Minister Yoshio Mori declared in September 2000 that Japan must “grab the historic opportunity of the IT revolution."

JAPAN / History / Japan Times Gone By

Sep 6, 2025

Japan Times 2000: Prime minister pitches ‘e-Japan’ as way of life

Japan must “grab the historic opportunity of the IT revolution,” Prime Minister Yoshio Mori declared as the final Diet session of the century opened in September 2000.

U.S. military personnel stand guard in front of the New Grand Hotel where Gen. Douglas MacArthur stayed circa September 1945 in Yokohama.

JAPAN / History / Perspectives

Sep 1, 2025

How the Allied Occupation changed Japan: A love story

By Michael MacArthur Bosack

A wartime GI and a Japanese civilian fell in love during the Occupation, embodying the peace built after Japan’s surrender.

Japan's World War II surrender documents went on display at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration in Washington on Thursday.

JAPAN / History

Aug 29, 2025

Instrument of Japan's World War II surrender on display in U.S.

It will be on display until Oct. 1 as part of a special exhibition to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.

Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

Tokyo Gas lights the way to carbon neutrality

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