Crafting Luck for Setsubun: The Art of 'Kitcho' at World Heritage Site

The number of people aged 100 or older in Japan has exceeded 100,000 for the first time, reaching a record 107,677 as of September 1, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

A 29-year-old man accused of killing his pregnant former girlfriend, a nail artist in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, admitted the charges at his first trial on September 14, with prosecutors saying he used tracking tags to locate the woman after deciding he wanted to kill her and "reset" his life to before their relationship.

Tokyo police have found that two teenage girls detained during coordinated patrols in the "Toyoko" area of Kabukicho were carrying forged student identification cards containing false ages and names.

Roads around the Fushimi Otesuji Shopping Street in Kyoto's Fushimi Ward were flooded on the evening of September 13 after water began gushing from a nearby road, forcing authorities to close part of the street to traffic.

Newly recovered video from a passenger's digital camera has revealed conditions aboard the Kazu I sightseeing boat before it sank off Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula in April 2022, a disaster that left 20 passengers and crew members dead and six passengers still missing more than four years later.

Police have rearrested a 30-year-old senior member of an organization affiliated with the Sixth Yamaguchi-gumi on suspicion of directing a loosely organized criminal group that stole smartphones and other goods worth about 4.15 million yen from stores in Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures.

High-end bonsai are being stolen from gardens across Japan in a growing series of thefts, with some trees later appearing on social media overseas and industry officials saying more than 100 cases are now reported each year.

Three people have been arrested in Kyoto on suspicion of operating an unlicensed underground banking service for Chinese clients, with police believing the group handled transactions worth about 600 million yen in total.