May 08, 2022 (BBC News) - Japan's number of children has been reported to be at its lowest since 1950.
There are just 14.6 million children in the nation under the age of 14, according to figures from Japan's internal affairs ministry.
Japan's falling birth rate and high life expectancy is putting pressure on public spending and resulting in labour shortages.
Typhoon No. 9 (Bavi) caused widespread transport disruption across Okinawa on July 11, grounding hundreds of flights, suspending ferry services and delaying mail and parcel deliveries as violent winds and dangerous seas continued to affect the prefecture's southern island chains.
Large and powerful Typhoon No. 9 (Bavi) continued moving northwest on July 11, bringing violent winds, torrential rain, and widespread power outages to Okinawa as authorities warned that dangerous conditions would persist well into the afternoon despite the storm's center gradually moving away.
A wave of bear sightings across Japan has forced the cancellation of traditional summer events, while one animal entered a home and came within inches of a sleeping resident's face.
Japan is expected to remain under intense summer heat through next week as the Pacific high-pressure system continues to dominate the country, bringing widespread temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius and increasing the risk of heatstroke.
Akie Abe, the wife of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has said she is only now becoming able to grieve honestly over her husband’s death, four years after he was shot and killed during an election campaign speech in Nara.
Three men have been arrested on suspicion of preparing to rob a home in Saitama City after police found new face masks and crowbars hidden in shrubbery at a coin-operated parking lot.
Empress Masako harvested wild silk cocoons at the Imperial Palace on July 9, continuing the long-standing sericulture tradition passed down through generations of empresses since the Meiji era.
A firefighter with the Toyonaka City Fire Department has been arrested on suspicion of confining his live-in partner's 6-year-old daughter at their home and causing her injury.
A 30-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after allegedly stabbing his father, a temple priest in his 70s, to death at their home in Nanao, Ishikawa Prefecture, on July 8, before going to a convenience store and telling a clerk, "I stabbed my father."
A 49-year-old woman in Koga, Ibaraki Prefecture, has been arrested on suspicion of injuring a 42-year-old woman she lived with by sewing her upper and lower lips together multiple times with a threaded needle, police said.
A landslide that occurred directly in front of homes in Koka, Shiga Prefecture, on July 7 caused part of a garden to collapse and cut off a road, bringing down an area about 25 meters wide and 80 meters long, including residential property.
Silk thread production for strings used in shamisen and other traditional Japanese instruments has reached its peak in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture.
A trainee monk has been arrested on suspicion of setting fire to Entsuji, a temple in Imari, Saga Prefecture, after a June blaze destroyed its main hall and living quarters, with the suspect telling investigators he had become dissatisfied with the amount of training and the way he was being instructed.
