Sushi shop bankruptcies in Japan rose 45.5% in the first half of 2026, yet only 18.8% were losing money, the lowest in Teikoku Databank's 20 years. They are not failing. They close because nobody takes over.
Astellas and Kyowa Kirin are the first Japanese drugmakers to sign most-favored-nation pricing deals with Washington. A September 29 tariff deadline explains the timing, and Japanese prices sit inside the U.S. formula.
Japan recorded 86,473 IVF births in 2024, about 1 in 8 of its 686,173 births. Treatments fell to 550,265 while the multiple-birth rate rose to 4.15 percent, and the 2022 insurance reform helps explain both.
The Switch 2 hit $499.99 in the US on September 1. Japan raised its price three months earlier, and Famitsu's numbers show a rush to 712,000 units in May, then 100,166 in June, with July still under April.
Hokkaido University and Japan's forestry institute modelled all 349 ski areas in the country. At 4°C of warming, only seven stay open 100 days a year on natural snow. At 2°C, 53 do.
Goldman Sachs, Citi, Deutsche Bank, MUFG and 17 others will form a company in late 2026 to issue a dollar stablecoin. Why banks are entering a $303.7 billion market where Tether holds about 60%, and what is undecided.
Saint Seiya creator Masami Kurumada sued his ex-manager on September 2, 2026, over 4.686 billion yen (about $29.3 million) allegedly embezzled. A trusted editor walled him off for 25 years, his lawyers say.
Shingo, a village of 1,919 in northern Japan, has had a tomb of Jesus since 1935, declared by a promoter of a forged chronicle. Almost nobody there believes it, yet the Shinto rite hit its 62nd edition in 2026.
Japan's Children and Families Agency asked 100,000 young people about marriage. 35.1% of unmarried respondents said they have no intention of marrying, but only 53.1% of that group said they do not want to.
Japan cremated 99.98% of its dead in fiscal 2024. But the rate was 36.2% in 1915, and the Meiji government banned cremation in 1873 before reversing itself. Land, cholera policy and local ordinances built that number.
Warming seas pushed a pufferfish north across the Tsugaru Strait, and the hybrids do not fit Japan's 1983 table of edible species and parts. How the rulebook caught up, and why the Mediterranean has the same gap.