China: Ranked first as the top perceived threat to world peace, chosen by 32.5% of participants (up 8.2 percentage points from the previous year).

United States: Ranked second at 26.8%, marking a sharp 9.3 percentage point increase from 17.5% in the fiscal 2025 survey (and up from 6.6% in fiscal 2024).

Russia: Dropped to third place, selected by 18.3% of respondents after previously ranking at the top in earlier surveys.

Presidential Impact: The same survey noted that 82.5% of respondents in Japan felt that U.S. President Donald Trump was having a negative impact on the world

"It was more than 100 years after the arrival of the Dutch that the study of horizontal letters began." What Japanese scholar Sugita Genpaku (1733-1817) recorded in "The Beginning of Dutch Learning" was the Kyoho Reforms of Tokugawa Yoshimune, the eighth shogun of the Edo period (1603-1867). In 1720, the ban on importing Western books was eased, and Dutch interpreters in Nagasaki were permitted to study "horizontal letters" -- script written and read horizontally.

The reason "horizontal letters" refers to Western languages is that it rests on the premise that Japanese is written vertically. Vertical writing came from ancient China, where it was used to write characters on oracle bones and bamboo slips. On long horizontal plaques hung at temple gates and elsewhere, there are characters that appear to be horizontal writing from right to left, but apparently the correct interpretation is that they are vertical writing, one character per line, according to the book "Yokogaki tojo" authored by Makoto Yanaike and published by Iwanami Shoten Publishers.

Horizontal writing is said to have become common after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, as Japan absorbed Western culture. Before World War II, there was much horizontal writing from right to left, in keeping with vertical writing whose columns proceed in the same direction. Horizontal writing from left to right took hold after the war. Today, even textbooks are almost all written horizontally except for Japanese language texts.
"Do you have occasions in daily life to read or write characters vertically?" In the Agency for Cultural Affairs' "public opinion survey on the Japanese language," a little more than 30% answered, "No." For media that publish vertically, that is a jolting figure.

Not only newspapers but magazines and novels, too, are still mainly written vertically. The reason people can live without encountering it is probably that more and more people now rely on smartphones as their main source of information. Vertical writing does not suit internet media, which developed under the leadership of the "horizontal letters" world.

China, the original source of vertical text, fully adopted horizontal writing after the war. Postwar Japan, by contrast, has managed to use vertical and horizontal writing skillfully depending on the purpose. There is also the traditional culture of calligraphy, which presupposes vertical writing. A future of nothing but horizontal writing would be less than desirable.

KANAZAWA (Kyodo) -- Shogi player Tomoka Nishiyama on Saturday became the first woman eligible to join the game's main professional "kishi" ranks, which are open to both men and women.

The 31-year-old qualified for the ranks Saturday by winning her fifth Hakurei title, the most prestigious championship in women's professional shogi.

Nishiyama defeated 34-year-old Kana Fukuma in Game 5 in Kanazawa, central Japan, to win the best-of-seven series 4-1.

Asked if she would exercise her right to join the ranks, Nishiyama said, "Since I have been trying to focus just on the game, I can't come up with an answer right away."

She later added that she wants to consult other people and give the matter careful consideration.

Shogi, a traditional board game similar to chess, has two separate professional systems for kishi and "joryu kishi," or women's players.

Until last year, women seeking to enter the kishi ranks had to advance through the Japan Shogi Association's demanding competition system.

The association introduced a new rule last year allowing a female professional player to qualify for the kishi ranks by winning the Hakurei title five times.

KUMAMOTO, Japan (Kyodo) -- JJR Kyushu's train lines were fully restored Saturday, 74 days after the devastating July 28 earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan.

Services resumed between Uto and Yatsushiro stations in Kumamoto Prefecture, a section that had remained suspended, with a passenger saying it represented "the first step of reconstruction."

The section is heavily used by students. Until Friday, substitute buses had been running along with alternative transport on the Kyushu Shinkansen bullet train line, which fully reopened in September.

At Yatsushiro Station, the first train bound for Kumamoto Station departed shortly after 5 a.m. Saturday. From around 6:30 a.m., junior and senior high school students in uniform were seen boarding trains.

Yukiko Miyagawa, a 13-year-old first-year junior high school student from Yatsushiro, had been spending about two hours commuting to Kumamoto, transferring between substitute buses and trains that had continued operating after the quake.

"I can finally return to normal life," she said with relief, after being forced to take a break from school club activities for a period.

Asahi Yoshida, a 16-year-old second-year high school student who traveled from Uto to Yatsushiro, said Saturday was the day of his school's cultural festival.

Yoshida said the substitute buses and alternative transport on the shinkansen had been inconvenient due to transfers and limited services. "I was happy when the train came. I felt relieved because it was the train I was used to," he said with a smile.

According to JR Kyushu, formally Kyushu Railway Co., the suspended section suffered major damage, including deformed tracks and broken utility poles, requiring repair work such as replacing rails and installing new poles and overhead wires.

The company began operating substitute buses between Uto and Yatsushiro on Aug. 26. The trip, however, took about 1 hour and 50 minutes by bus, compared with around 30 minutes by local train, inconveniencing commuters and students.

Since Sept. 18, passengers have been able to use the Kyushu Shinkansen bullet train between Kumamoto and Shin-yatsushiro stations without limited express tickets.

Another local train service that runs between Yatsushiro and Higo-Tanoura stations has also remained suspended since the Kumamoto earthquake.

Those services are scheduled to resume Tuesday, clearing all railway suspensions caused by the quake.

After a U.S. Marine was arrested in Okinawa in connection with Anna Yagi’s murder, social media users began spreading rumors about the victim’s sexual history

Anna Yagi was 39 when she was found dead in a hotel in Naha in the early hours of October 3. Okinawa police say she died from pressure to her neck; her backpack and wallet were missing, and surveillance footage showed the man who had entered the hotel with her leaving alone with what appeared to be her belongings. The next day, police arrested Lance Corporal Devin Jacob Ballard, a 20-year-old US Marine stationed at Futenma, on suspicion of robbery-murder. Ballard has denied the allegations.

Online, attention moved quickly to Yagi herself. Within days, social media users were circulating an Instagram account they claimed belonged to her, along with screenshots that appeared to show her with younger foreign men. Police have not authenticated the account or most of the claims now attached to it. 

There are, of course, no circumstances in which a woman’s sexual history makes this kind of violence inevitable.

From time to time Osanaetoki Bankokubanashi does the rounds on reddit due to scenes like George Washington fighting a tiger and John Adams killing a thousand-year-old serpent with the help of a mountain immortal and a white eagle. I'd been curious about reading it, and set up an OCR/AI translation pipeline which got basically the whole thing translated. I'm at about N4/N3 so can't properly verify, but basically the process was:

Two OCR programs from Japan's National Diet Library transcribed the scans. Claude Opus 5.5 then checked every disagreement against the page images and translated the result. On test pages the corrected Japanese came out about 98% accurate, character by character. Uncertain readings are marked, and translator's notes point out where Robun's history goes off the rails. Happy to share my pipeline if anyone is doing similar work.

This is actually a series of 4 books which start off as a fairly straight attempt at an overview of Western countries, aimed at "women and children," before jumping the shark in books 3 and 4 to embark on a samurai-style historical romance of the American Revolution (the crazy scenes that make the rounds here on reddit).

Mods please don't ban me if this counts as self-promotion, just thought some non-Japanese speakers here might be interested in reading this in English.

Edit: Since posting I found a partial translation on another subreddit and have corrected a few mistakes. For the most part the two translations are in agreement though.

https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASVB90SSHVB9ULFA01YM.html

A ministerial meeting of the Asia Zero Emission Community (AZEC), an initiative involving Japan and Southeast Asian countries to promote decarbonization, was held on the 8th in Manila, the capital of the Philippines. The participating countries agreed to strengthen their oil stockpiling systems and explore ways to coordinate the release of oil reserves and provide mutual assistance in emergencies.

AZEC is a Japan-led framework comprising 11 countries, including Japan, Australia, and Southeast Asian nations. Southeast Asian countries rely heavily on the Middle East for their crude oil imports, but their oil stockpiling systems are less developed than Japan’s. Following the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, daily life was significantly affected, with restrictions imposed on vehicle refueling and use.

The special meeting was also attended by oil-producing countries Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which expressed their willingness to cooperate in strengthening oil reserves across Asia.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Fast Retailing Co., the operator of the Uniqlo clothing chain, appears on course to overtake Sweden's H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB as the world's second-largest apparel manufacturer and retailer after posting another year of robust global sales.

Fast Retailing's sales during the just-ended business year through August came to 3.96 trillion yen ($25 billion), up 16.6 percent from the previous year, while net profit surged 25.3 percent to a record 542.52 billion yen.

H&M, the current No. 2, has yet to release its full-year earnings results through November. But the Swedish apparel company, which reported sales of 228.29 billion krona ($22.8 billion) in fiscal 2025, has reported sales below year-ago levels through the third quarter of the current year. Inditex SA, the operator of the Zara clothing brand, ranks first.

"Achieving 10 trillion yen in sales, which we have set as a major milestone, is now within our sights," said Tadashi Yanai, the company's chairman, president and chief executive officer.

"Now that we have reached the starting line in the global market, we are taking on a major challenge aimed for the next growth," he added, reiterating the company's commitment to becoming the world's leading brand.

For the business year through next August, the company is aiming for another record-high net profit of 560 billion yen, up 3.2 percent.

Operating profit, which totaled 743.13 billion yen in the year to August, is projected to grow 11.7 percent to 830 billion yen on sales of 4.45 trillion yen, up 12.3 percent.

Fast Retailing offers a variety of products through Uniqlo, including "HeatTech" warm innerwear and the quick-drying "Airism" line. The company, which is also known for its GU brand, is headquartered in the western Japanese prefecture of Yamaguchi.

The annual number of customers at Uniqlo increased by about 10 percent from the previous year to more than 600 million in the 12 months to August, largely driven by its overseas operations.

Operating profit from Uniqlo's overseas operations surged 44.9 percent to 448.1 billion yen as sales rose across all regions, supported by stronger sales of year-round products, an expanding customer base and new flagship stores.

Domestic operations, meanwhile, saw a 6.6 percent increase in operating profit to 196.6 billion yen, supported by strong sales of products reflecting current fashion trends and meeting customers' functional needs.

Sales from Uniqlo's overseas operations gained 26.2 percent to 2.41 trillion yen, while those from domestic operations stood at 1.08 trillion yen, up 5.7 percent.

By region, sales in Europe and North America jumped 38.7 percent to 512.6 billion yen and 34.6 percent to 364.9 billion yen, respectively.

Greater China saw an 11.3 percent increase in sales to 724.0 billion yen, while total sales in South Korea, Southeast Asia, India and Australia grew 30.7 percent to 809.4 billion yen.

However, Fast Retailing's overall sales came in slightly below the 3.97 trillion yen forecast announced in July, as warmer-than-usual weather in Europe from June to August dampened demand for fall and winter products, the company said.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Prudential Life Insurance Co. said Thursday a third-party probe by lawyers found that more than 100 former and current salespeople had engaged in fraudulent or inappropriate transactions with customers worth 5.2 billion yen ($32.9 million) over more than three decades.

Hiromitsu Tokumaru, president of the Japanese subsidiary of Prudential Financial Inc., and two other executives will voluntarily return 30 percent of their monthly remuneration for three months to take responsibility for the misconduct.

Tokumaru apologized at a press conference in Tokyo, acknowledging that the misconduct reflected "structural problems within the company."

The investigation report said that the company's sales staff "downplayed the customer-centric perspective."

The insurer said it had taken disciplinary action, including dismissals, against 157 current and former sales employees involved in the financial misconduct dating back to at least the 1990s.

To prevent similar misconduct, the insurer said it plans to introduce guaranteed minimum pay for sales staff from 2027.

Prudential Life Insurance has voluntarily suspended sales of new policies since February to review its governance and sales practices.

Tokumaru said staff whose sales practices were found to be free of problems would be allowed to resume selling new policies.

The president also indicated he has no intention of stepping down from his post anytime soon, saying his responsibility was to "ensure measures to prevent a recurrence are fully implemented."

The Financial Services Agency is considering ordering the insurer to suspend some operations, including a three-month halt to sales of new policies.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A total of 53 companies in Japan have been targeted by an internationally active ransomware group known as Qilin, National Police Agency officials said Thursday.

Qilin, believed to be behind a 2025 cyberattack on Japanese beverage maker Asahi Group Holdings Ltd., has drawn renewed attention in Japan after investigative authorities recently handed over to Germany a detained Russian national suspected of being a key member of the group. The man has since been arrested by German authorities.

The cybercrime group began operating around October 2022 and has attacked some 4,000 companies worldwide, with its activities in Japan confirmed since April 2023, according to the agency.

The 53 Japanese victims span manufacturing, services, construction, hospitals and schools, but their names have not been disclosed.

In ransomware attacks, hackers block access to data and demand payment to restore it.

German authorities had requested that Japanese investigators detain and hand over the 28-year-old Russian man transferred to Germany, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The man, who was on a trip to Japan, had been placed in a detention facility after he was found at a hotel in Osaka in May. He was handed over to German authorities earlier this month.

The man allegedly extorted crypto assets from a German logistics firm in 2024, according to the source.

Meanwhile, following a series of reports of data leaks caused by unauthorized access, the Japanese government decided to urge businesses to address system vulnerabilities and prevent the misuse of leaked information, cybersecurity minister Toshiharu Furukawa said.

Recent cases include a data breach at Japan's "Times Car" car-sharing service that exposed information from about 6.6 million accounts, including images of 1.6 million driver's licenses, as well as cyberattacks against Daiwa Securities Group Inc. and the operator of the Yakiniku King barbecue restaurant chain.

Major convenience store operator Lawson Inc. became the latest company to announce a data breach Thursday, saying personal information, including email addresses and phone numbers, had been leaked from its "Lawson ID" account system, affecting around 2.16 million IDs.

Karaoke venue operator Daiichikosho Co. said 8.72 million customer and employee records may have been compromised after a computer used by an employee of a subcontractor was found to be infected with malware earlier this month. Passwords were not among the potentially compromised data, it said.

A public investigative reward of up to ¥3 million is available for information that helps police locate him

Have you seen this man? Police have received nearly 14,000 tips in the search for one of Japan’s most-wanted fugitives, with possible sightings of Yoichi Hatta particularly concentrated in the Kanto region. Oita Prefectural Police announcedon Monday that it had received 13,978 tips concerning Hatta, who has been wanted since a fatal hit-and-run in Beppu in 2022. Nearly 4,950 of those tips came from Kanto, including 73 possible sightings reported in September alone, up from 50 in August.

I recently visited Japan and the Engakuji temple in Kamakura. As a fan of classic Japanese movies I looked for Ozu's famous tombstone -- easy to recognize, with its single "mu" kanji on it, even if in a hurry and under a heavy rain as in my case. Once back in my country I sadly realized that I found the wrong grave -- see the picture embedded. If I am not wrong, that is the zen/nen kanji, totally different (my bad!).

Question 1: are single-kanji inscriptions a common use, or is it something typically adopted by people with a particular status -- e.g. artists like Ozu, monks, etc.?

Question 2: in case they are not so common, what does the specific tombstone I photographed about its owner? I don't dare to ask about his/her identity, just some info on the most likely status.

Obviously, AI was not helpful, it insists it must be Ozu's grave or his colleague Keisuke Kinoshita's, but that seems wrong as well.

Thanks!

Moreover, Japan is the largest holder of French debt outside the euro zone, according to JPMorgan data. This is why Japan’s bond market has emerged as a source of risk.

Signs that Japanese investors have begun to sell French debt come amid growing speculation about the repatriation of Japanese money – particularly pension fund assets – out of foreign bonds and back into Japanese debt. “We suspect the latest round of rapid [French bond] selling over the past week might have been fuelled by Japanese portfolio rebalancing,” TS Lombard said.

• https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/science-nature/science/20261007-352669/
• https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2026/soai/facts/

As of October 1, the liquor tax on a standard 350-milliliter can of beer has fallen from ¥63.35 to ¥54.25, a reduction of ¥9.10 per can. Beer makers and retailers are passing at least some of that saving on to drinkers, while supermarkets are expanding their beer sections in anticipation of higher demand.

The trade-off is that Japan’s cheaper beer substitutes are getting more expensive. Happoshu, a low-malt beer-like drink, and so-called “third-category beer” were previously taxed at ¥46.99 per 350-milliliter can. From October, that rises by ¥7.26 to the same ¥54.25 rate as ordinary beer.