Harumi Ozawa

Japanese condom makers are ramping up preparations ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games

Japan's economy, trade and industry minister has resigned over his comments about radiation contamination in crisis-hit Fukushima.

Workers at Japan's crippled atomic power plant on Wednesday plugged a hole spewing highly radioactive water into the ocean.

Rescue teams searched in dense fog and rain on Thursday for victims of a powerful earthquake in northern Japan that left more than 120 people injured.

World business chiefs gathered in Tokyo on Thursday to discuss ways to tackle global warming as transatlantic tensions emerged over how far industry should go to reduce emissions. The heads of the business federations of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations agreed that climate change needs serious attention.

Militant environmentalists hurled stinging acid for more than an hour onto a Japanese whaling ship off Antarctica on Monday, hurting three crew members, officials said. Both Japan and Australia, the leading opponent of whaling, condemned the latest attack by the Sea Shepherd group.

Japanese professor Yoji Kimura believes laughter is a weapon that in healthy doses can end the world's wars. The only problem is finding a way to measure it. And so the expert on communications has invented a machine to chart out laughter -- and a new unit of "aH" to calculate it.

Japan's Sony, scrambling to contain the fall-out from widening defective battery problems, launched a global replacement programme after China's Lenovo became the latest computer maker to mount a recall. Sony will offer to replace certain battery packs for notebook computers in response to concerns at recent overheating incidents, it said late on Thursday.

Wataru Tsurumi sparked outrage more than a decade ago with his handbook on how to commit suicide. Now, he says, Japan is finally addressing an issue it long turned a blind eye to. The Complete Manual of Suicide, which was published in 1993 and has sold more than a million copies, has created the momentum for the start of public discussions on the issue, he said.

A Japanese spacecraft that failed on its landmark mission to collect asteroid samples suffered a new setback on Wednesday with its return to Earth delayed by three years until 2010. The Hayabusa spacecraft has been out of control since Friday because of a gas burst caused by leaking fuel.