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March 09, 2025
 

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POVERTY

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
JAPAN / Science & Health / Longform
Mar 7, 2025
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly
Despite longstanding taboos, evolving attitudes toward women's health highlight shifting cultural norms.
Donald Trump has halted most U.S. government-funded aid globally for 90 days, while moving to dismantle USAID, which he accused of being run "by a bunch of radical lunatics."
WORLD / Politics / ANALYSIS
Feb 11, 2025
U.S aid freeze risks handing influence to China in Beijing's backyard
Trump has halted most U.S. government-funded aid globally for 90 days, while moving to dismantle USAID, which he accused of being run "by a bunch of radical lunatics."
Shadrack Maseko, whose family has been residing on Meyerskop farm for three generations, looks over a piece of land, in Free State province, South Africa, on Sunday.
WORLD / Politics
Feb 11, 2025
The stark inequalities South Africa's new land act seeks to bridge
Nearly three quarters of privately-owned land is in the hands of white people who make up 8% of the population, while only 4% is owned by Black people who constitute nearly 80%.
Far from making America great again, Donald Trump’s actions since assuming the presidency are giving a giant boost to China’s attempts at world leadership.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2025
‘America First’ in action
Far from making America great again, Trump is giving a giant boost to China’s claims to world leadership.
People protest at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Wednesday against President Donald Trump’s decision to effectively shut down the United States Agency for International Development.
EDITORIALS
Feb 7, 2025
Shutting USAID deprives the U.S. of a vital foreign policy tool
Trump's decision to suspend USAID is a blow to Japan, which has long valued aid as a stabilizing force.
Orphans and children separated from their parents in Kadugli gather to eat boiled leaves at a camp within the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North controlled area in Boram County, Sudan, on June 22, 2024.
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 4, 2025
Millions of malnourished children face lifelong health woes
Famines and other food crises can leave an entire generation with physical and cognitive deficits, experts warn.
Eme-Ima Kitchen is one of over 10,000 kodomo shokudō in Japan. A term first used in 2012 to describe makeshift eateries offering free or cheap meals to disadvantaged kids, it now refers to a diverse range of individuals, groups and organizations working to provide not only food but a sense of belonging to both children and adults.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Feb 3, 2025
Japan’s ‘children’s cafeterias’ are booming — but is that a good thing?
They're no substitute for policy, but by providing food and belonging, these safe spaces are filling in the cracks of the nation's fraying communities.
Solar panels near the cooling towers of the retired coal-fired Komati Power Station in South Africa's Mpumalanga province on May 9
ENVIRONMENT / Climate change
Jan 27, 2025
South Africa's patchwork climate plans risk widening inequality
Poorer regions may be left behind in the transition away from polluting industries to green jobs.
In 2024, child mortality for children before the age of 5 reached a record low of 3.6%, down from over 25% in 1950. For most of history, about half of all newborns died as children.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 22, 2025
Even this year is the best time ever to be alive
Another way of looking at it: Every day over the past couple of years, roughly 30,000 people moved out of extreme poverty worldwide.
A student takes unified university entrance examinations in Tokyo on Saturday. According to a survey on struggling households with children of high school age or older, 87% responded that they strongly feel their economic situations will affect their children's university applications and education choices.
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2025
98% say poverty will impact their child's education path, survey finds
Many survey respondents called for subsidies or exemptions for examination fees, as well as financial aid for out-of-school lesson tuition.
Wawira Njiru, the founder of Food4Education, serves food during the opening of a new kitchen in Mombasa County, Kenya, in 2022. The organization started in 2012 by feeding 25 children out of a single kitchen. Now it feeds nearly half a million every day.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET
Jan 19, 2025
Amid rising world hunger, a Japan-inspired group in Kenya is making a big impact
Food4Education is helping feed half a million students through a program that drew inspiration from Japan's renowned school lunch programs.
A woman who was displaced by a flood shells cowpeas as she sits outside her shelter in Banki, in Maiduguri, Nigeria, in October.
COMMENTARY / World / The Year Ahead
Jan 6, 2025
The uphill battle against poverty
After the pandemic years, when tens of millions of people were pushed into poverty, the need for a renewed effort is obvious.
A man pushes a cart along Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles
WORLD / Society
Jan 4, 2025
Ahead of Trump term, U.S. cities grapple with homelessness
The crisis worsened with the end of pandemic-related aid, and are driven by a lack of affordable housing, as well as inflation and low wages.
Tomoko Yamashita, head of the NPO that runs Park. Youth & Books & Design, says she wants to make the facility a place where older teens can feel secure.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Kyushu
Dec 23, 2024
New facility offers truant high school students a place to feel at home
Himitsukichi, a nonprofit group, has renovated an old, vacant house to turn it into a site for older teens.
A vendor sells a box of cigarettes across rolls of barbed wire, separating Thailand and Myanmar, in Mae Sot, Thailand, on Aug. 18, 2023.
ASIA PACIFIC
Dec 17, 2024
Myanmar’s war has forced doctors and nurses into prostitution
The rise in prostitution is another blow to the status of women in Myanmar.
Corn crops affected by a long drought, near Buenos Aires in January 2022
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability
Dec 15, 2024
World falls short of drought deal at Saudi-hosted talks
The Riyadh talks came after a lack of progress on in other international summits regarding biodiversity, plastics pollution and climate finance in recent months.
Children eat at a <i>kodomo shokudo</i> in the city of Osaka. The number of such cafeterias, which provide free or low-cost meals to children in need, has surpassed 10,000 nationwide.
JAPAN / Society
Dec 13, 2024
Number of cafeterias for children in need hits record high in Japan
There are now more kodomo shokudo, which offer free or low-cost meals, than elementary and junior high schools.
Insurance tycoon Douw Steyn’s 250 million rand home overlooks the luxury residential estate bearing his name near Johannesburg, South Africa.
BUSINESS
Dec 9, 2024
Luxury estates for the rich are a booming business in South Africa
Despite a 20% decline in South Africa’s millionaire population over the past decade, it remains a hub for the continent’s high-net-worth individuals.
About $105 trillion is projected to be passed down from older generations over the next quarter century, according to research firm Cerulli Associates, an amount roughly equal to global gross domestic product in 2023.
BUSINESS / Economy
Dec 6, 2024
A $105 trillion inheritance windfall is on the way for U.S. heirs
The latest inheritance projection by Cerulli is 45% higher than the 25-year forecast the firm made only three years ago.
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
BUSINESS / Economy
Nov 22, 2024
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
Combined with expected spending from the private sector, this year’s package is estimated to add a total of ¥39 trillion to the economy.
Tokyo responds to Trump remarks on 'interesting' Japan-U.S. security pact
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba (left) and U.S. President Donald Trump arrive for a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on Feb. 7.
As Trump hails taking back of Panama Canal, Hong Kong Inc. walks tightrope
Balboa Port, operated by Panama Ports Company, at the Panama Canal. Conglomerate CK Hutchison, controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, has agreed to sell its ports network, including assets along the Panama Canal, to a U.S. consortium led by BlackRock.
Some 44% of Japanese lawmakers back selective dual surname system
Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan leader Yoshihiko Noda addresses a rally calling for the introduction of a system allowing married couples to choose whether to use the same or different family names on Feb. 26 at parliament.
Foreign single mothers struggle with language barriers and visas
Forbidden from seeing friends and forced to devote herself to housework, Reina (whose name has been changed), a 37-year-old Filipino national living in the city of Nagoya, became socially isolated.
Bank of America CEO willing to hire in Japan amid revival
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
Cherry blossom season set to kick off on March 21 in Tokyo
A Weathernews forecast shows the cherry blossom season will begin on March 21 in Tokyo.
‘Granny hobbies’ are the new self-care
Yarn shortages are a sign that hobbies like knitting and crochet are gaining in popularity.
Can Shiori Ito’s documentary open Japan’s black box?
Shiori Ito is the first Japanese director to have been nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary feature film. "Black Box Diaries," which tells the story of her quest for justice following her rape in 2015, hasn't been released in Japan.
Japanese stocks stalled at 1989 levels as investors weigh tariffs and rates
An electronic sign displays the benchmark Nikkei stock average on a street in Tokyo. The stock average has been range-bound between about 38,000 and 40,000 since hitting a new all-time high in July last year.
Redevelopment and resistance in historic Nishiogikubo
Tsuyoshi Mizukoshi, owner of a pub in Nishiogi’s commercial area, is a community organizer who is rallying local residents against the road development plan.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Wealthier women in the prewar era had been the targets of various media-related health campaigns that mistakenly encouraged them to avoid everything from riding bicycles to reading novels when their monthly cycles came around.
Menstruation in Japan: Breaking the silence, slowly
By Tomoko Otake

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