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.
In spring 2026 a meter-tall mat of watercress smothered a suburban river in Matsuyama. Japan calls it a priority-control invasive species, yet farms ship 362 tons a year. How New Zealand, Australia and the US see it.
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.
Pacific fishing nations agreed on August 18, 2026 to raise the quota for bluefin tuna over 30 kilograms by 25 percent, to 14,836 tons in the western Pacific, and to cut the quota for juveniles by 6 percent.
At Disney's D23, Tetsuya Nomura and Tai Yasue promised Kingdom Hearts IV arrives in 2027 with absolutely no delay. Given the studio's history, that is an unusual thing to say out loud.
Kagawa University Hospital treated a three-year-old girl's recurrent C. diff colitis with her father's gut bacteria. A year on, no relapse. US-approved products exclude children, and the EU sets shared rules in 2027.