Japan's NIES has made iPS cells from four endangered birds. The flightless Okinawa rail has lost one of the two genes birds use to spot a virus. Inside the minus-160°C cell bank and the brain organoids grown from it.
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.
A University of Tokyo and Arc Institute team has shown how the IS621 jumping gene cuts itself out of an E. coli genome, resolving a chicken-and-egg puzzle that had stood since 2024.
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.
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.
Fish have no eyelids, yet pufferfish close their eyes. Shimonoseki's Kaikyokan aquarium dissected 51 species and traced the eye-closing muscle to the one that deflates a puffed-up puffer.
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.
Murakami's salmon run fell from 55,000 fish to 1,400 in a decade. Now the town is spending about $32,000 to attempt what Norway and Chile have not: closing the life cycle of chum salmon entirely on land.
ABLIC's CLEAN-Boost banks tiny amounts of ambient energy and releases them in one burst, amplified up to 30,000 times. Inside the battery-less sensor that trips on 150 microliters of water.
A paint maker in Imabari spent five years building a bear deterrent launcher called Kintaro. Its president fired it at his own body for a year and a half, and zoos refused to let him test it on a real bear.
Transits through the Strait of Hormuz have fallen from 21.6 to 4.9 million barrels a day, and Gulf producers are building seven bypass pipelines. Japan restored procurement, but July brought a 634.5 billion yen deficit.
Japan has begun selling Telomelysin, a rewired cold virus that multiplies only inside cancer cells and goes into esophageal tumors by endoscope. Three doses list at 9.3 million yen; the trial behind it had 37 patients.
Hafnium keeps advanced chips and jet engines running, yet the world makes about 71 tonnes a year, nearly all of it in France and the United States. An Osaka chemical maker now wants a share of it by 2028.
China's rare earth magnet shipments to Japan fell 52.2% in July 2026 while US-bound shipments rose 4.6%. Japan tells itself pressure breeds breakthroughs. Optical glass and neodymium magnets agree; aluminium does not.
Japan signed a mass-production contract for the Terra B1 interceptor drone on August 25, 2026, three months after opening the tender. Three foreign entries were tested too; only the Japanese aircraft got a contract.
Tourists are buying eyeglasses in Japan, where no prescription is required and an Osaka store says it can go from eye test to handover in 25 minutes. In the US, a replacement pair can take two weeks to a month.
On August 24 Takaichi pledged continued aid to Ukraine and sanctions on Russia at the Kyiv summit. Japan also draws 8.9% of its LNG from Russia, and a US Senate bill counts it among the top five buyers of Russian gas.
JAXA has set MMX for launch at 4:41:03 a.m. on October 20, 2026. The probe lands on Phobos, collects at least 10 grams and returns in fiscal 2031, chasing a first from the Martian system.
Cold sleep was a movie prop. Then ESA calculated that a hibernating crew would cut a Mars spacecraft's mass by a third, and a Japanese lab found the brain switch. With humans, it is still a matter of hours.
ispace and Mitsubishi Heavy will launch the ULTRA lunar lander on an H3 rocket in 2028, with no rideshare. Of the 18.7 billion yen Mission 3 expects to bring in, 12 billion is a government subsidy.