Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako visited Ehime Prefecture on May 16th ahead of the National Tree-Planting Festival scheduled for May 17th, touring Japan’s only aquarium operated by high school students as part of an extracurricular club activity.
The Osaka High Court upheld the acquittal on May 12th of Hiroshi Nakata, the 67-year-old head of the Yamaken-gumi faction, who had been charged with shooting and seriously injuring a member of a rival crime syndicate in Kobe in 2019.
Police have arrested a couple in their 40s and their son in his 20s for allegedly confining a teenage girl inside a locked closet at their Tokyo home under the guise of discipline.
The National Red Cross Convention held on May 12 honored people involved in Red Cross activities across Japan. Empress Masako, serving as honorary president, attended the event alongside other female members of the Imperial Family, including Crown Princess Kiko, who serves as vice honorary president.
Three men, including 22-year-old Sakuya Murakami from Takatsuki City in Osaka Prefecture, were arrested on suspicion of robbery resulting in injury after allegedly spraying a man in the face with what is believed to have been bear repellent and attempting to steal his backpack on a street in Nagaokakyo, Kyoto Prefecture, in April.
Thick black smoke billowed across an expressway in Fukuoka on May 11th after a fire broke out beneath an elevated section of the road, temporarily blocking visibility for drivers and forcing a partial road closure.
Several Japanese nationals suspected of involvement in a special fraud operation in Indonesia have been detained, after a report from the family of a Japanese woman believed to have been trafficked led authorities to uncover the operation.
Part of the exterior wall of a commercial building collapsed in Osaka on May 10th, causing a nearby highway signpost to topple onto a taxi in what authorities suspect may have been linked to the building’s aging condition.