Japan Football Association President Kohzo Tashima said, "I made the decision to change the coach because I want to do whatever I can to help the team win at the World Cup. I believe it's best the new coach is someone who has been working with Japanese players."
Nishino is currently the Technical Director of the Japan Football Association and has managed top-tier J-League teams.
Before that, he led the national team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
The head of the association praised Halilhodzic for helping Japan qualify for its 6th straight World Cup.
But he said the coach has been struggling to get through to the players. The team recently suffered a tie and a loss to teams that hadn't even qualified for the World Cup.
Japan will play Colombia in its opening group stage match in June.
Tickets for all of host-nation Japan's Rugby World Cup 2019 pool games have sold out following the start of sales on a first-come, first-serve basis, organizers said Saturday. (Japan Today) 
More than half a million high-school students and graduates across Japan are putting their knowledge to the test at unified college and university entrance exams.
(NHK) 
Police in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, have arrested an 80-year-old man on suspicion of murder after he threw oil on his 79-year-old wife and set fire to her inside a car. (Japan Today) 
A public high school in Machida City has apologized to a boy after the emergence online of a video that purportedly shows a male teacher assaulting him, reports Fuji News Network (tokyoreporter.com) 
Work began in northeastern Japan on Saturday to tear down a former town hall building where dozens of people died in a tsunami in 2011, despite calls from some residents to preserve it as a memorial.
(Japan Today) 
The Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP-11), a trade pact among 11 Pacific Rim nations, officially opened its doors to new members on Saturday in a move aimed at bolstering free trade at a time when the U.S. and China remain locked in a trade war.
(Nikkei) 
The number of suicides in Japan dropped 3.4 percent from a year earlier to 20,598 in 2018, down for the ninth year and the lowest in 37 years amid economic recovery, preliminary data by the National Police Agency showed Friday.
(Japan Today) 
Japan's Epsilon-4 rocket has put into orbit seven small satellites that were developed by private-sector companies and universities.
(NHK) 
The body of a man struck by an oncoming train at a station in Fujimi City hit and injured two women on the platform, police said on Friday, reports TV Asahi. (tokyoreporter.com) 
A glance at the World University Rankings, published last September by the Times Higher Education, reveals the following major changes in the rankings compared with the previous year. (Japan Times)