Trade deficit narrows as external shipments grow for 5th straight month

1. The Event

TOKYO – Last week Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi won a landslide election that she hopes will allow her to move her nation's policies hard right. On Wednesday she will be reappointed as prime minister by the parliament and form her second Cabinet.It's a formality, but Takaichi will look to use the symbolism of the

Containers at a shipping terminal in Yokohama, Japan on Oct. 18, 2021. Japan's trade deficit surged in September as imports overwhelmed export growth. Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images Japanese exports climbed 16.8% year on year in January, sharply beating market expectations and growing at their fastest rate since November 2022 as shipment to Asia and Western Europe surged, government data on Wednesday showed.

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Can Hokkaido’s annual outdoor art event charm a Tohoku girl who’s always been lukewarm on winter travel?

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Astro Boy, first serialised in 1952, remains one of Japan’s national treasures and the defining work of the “father of manga”, Osamu Tezuka. When the renowned

Payments to reach $270bn in fiscal 2029 on rising interest, finance ministry estimate shows

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last week won a landslide election that gave her a strong public mandate

Ginowan city found levels of “forever chemicals” well below Japan’s legal limit in water sampled from a manhole oozing white foam near a Marine airfield.

In a major stride for Japanese AI development, NVIDIA has unveiled the Nemotron-Nano-9B-v2-Japanese, a compact yet powerful small language model (SLM) designed specifically for enterprises in Japan. This latest release builds on the Nemotron 2 Nano family, offering advanced Japanese language understanding and sophisticated agent capabilities in a lightweight package that is easy to deploy. By combining an established architecture with high-quality synthetic Japanese data, NVIDIA is enabling Japanese enterprises to leverage AI that is culturally aware, efficient, and customizable—paving the way for next-generation enterprise applications.

Gas-powered plant, crude oil facility and synthetic industrial diamonds plant to begin

File image of US President Donald Trump. Photo: Getty Images via AFP President Donald Trump on Tuesday (Feb 17, 2026) announced Japan's planned investments in US energy and critical minerals projects, the first installment under a bilateral trade deal, ahead of Prime Minister Sane Takaichi's visit to Washington. The commitments total $36 billion, the US Commerce Department said in a separate statement.

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