Japan said it “strongly protests” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to a disputed island chain. Russian state media reported on Thursday that Putin visited Iturup – known in Japan as Etorofu – one of four islands in the Kuril chain that are claimed by both Russia and Japan. Japan’s foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi said the
Washington and Tokyo’s unprecedented step to bolster the yen already appears to be unraveling. On July 30, Japan’s finance ministry reportedly sold as much as $59 billion to buy the Japanese currency, then at 40-year-lows. Tokyo and Washington later confirmed they had acted together to bolster a weak yen. It was the first time they
Despite its ferocious popularity, people still tend to swear off anime entirely. These are usually the people whose reference of the medium pertains to a certain stereotype or to the few seconds of anime they once saw on a computer somewhere in the early 2000s. But Japan has been producing some of the most emotionally
Last week’s attempt to boost the sagging yen wasn’t the first time the U.S. and Japan took such joint action, but the way they did it revealed weakness in the dollar’s global status, according to a top currency expert. In a Financial Times op-ed on Tuesday, University of California at Berkeley economist Barry Eichengreen pointed
Newly-released security camera footage shows the moment last month’s magnitude 6.8 quake shook Kumamoto General Hospital in Japan. Four surgeries were under way at the time. Footage from a camera in an operating room where an abdominal surgery was being performed shows medical staff shielding the patient with their bodies as equipment swayed violently, and
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Sia and Mikael Lilja, who moved from Sweden to Japan, where they bought and are restoring an old house. It’s been edited for length and clarity. We’ve been together for 12 years and married for the last 4. In 2020, we bought a piece of land
