The Japanese martial art of kendo has a subjective scoring system, so it is unlikely to be included in the Olympics in its present form, which is fine to many in the sport’s global community.

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The Way of the Sword Is Too Complex for the Olympics

The Japanese consumer electronics giant expects to return to profit this year, aiming to reduce by half the losses in its television business.

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Sony Striving to Cut Its Way From Record Loss to Profit

Sony Corp predicted a return to profit this year as it looks to halve the losses in its TV business that pushed the Japanese consumer electronics giant to a record loss of $5.74 billion in the year just ended.

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Sony Sees Return to Profit, Aims to Halve TV Losses

Influential Japanese politician and backroom power-broker Ichiro Ozawa is found not guilty in a funding scandal.

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Japan clears top politician Ozawa

A Japanese woman who murdered her three former lovers in 2009 is sentenced to death.

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‘Black widow’ gets death in Japan

Kyo Ya, a Japanese hideaway in the middle of the East Village, offers a menu grounded in the shapes and rhythms of the natural world.

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Restaurant Review: Kyo Ya — NYC — Restaurant Review

Nissan’s new hatchback is to be produced at its Sunderland plant, the Japanese car manufacturer announces.

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Jobs boost from new Nissan model

The US Coast Guard has used cannon to fire on and sink a crewless Japanese ship that drifted to Alaska after the 2011 tsunami.

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VIDEO: US Coast Guard fires on ‘ghost ship’

Japan will shoot down any part of North Korea's long-range rocket that enters Japanese territory, its defense minister says ahead of a planned launch next month.

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Japan: N. Korea rocket will be shot down

The girls of AKB48 arrived in Washington this week, a buoyant, giggling mass of knees, dimples, hair bows, teeth. Do the girls of AKB48 own any pets? the American students asked the Japanese pop stars on the occasion of their first visit to the U.S. capital. Read full article > >

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Japanese girl group AKB48 breezes through D.C. in whirlwind of cuteness

An empty Japanese fishing vessel washed out to sea by the March 2011 tsunami is spotted drifting off the west coast of Canada.

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Tsunami ship drifting off Canada

It seems an improbable notion of landscape architecture: Create a big pond to control the tide, surround it with 1,700 Japanese flowering cherry trees , and place near it a Roman monument to a president who never saw a Japanese cherry and didn’t care that much for Washington. And yet the Tidal Basin works as a beloved civic space, a two-mile promenade that calls us back year after year at blossom time. Read full article > >

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Beyond Washington’s cherry trees, how did so many Japanese plants find their way into American gardens?

International sanctions on Iran are starting to pinch, and Tehran is scrambling to hang on to buyers for its crude oil exports. In January, China, South Korea and Singapore sharply cut their oil purchases from Iran. Last month, Shipping Corp. of India canceled an Iranian shipment because its European insurers refused to provide coverage for the tanker, according to Lloyd’s List. And Japanese oil refiners have asked for clauses to be added to oil-purchase contracts so they can back out if they can’t obtain tanker insurance. Read full article > >

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Noose tightens around Iranian oil exports

The United States military has not controlled Okinawa since 1972, when it reverted to Japanese control, but at some places it is still possible to find a taste of the old times.

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Naha Journal: In Okinawa, Some Still Toast Era of U.S. Control

Kitakyushu has declared war on the yakuza, just as authorities say any romantic aura that may have enveloped gangsters in the past is falling away in Japanese society.

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With Risk, Japanese City Takes On Once Accepted Fact of Life: Its Gangsters