On Sunday, May 21, North Korea’s military launched a medium-to-long range ballistic missile, the Pukguksong-2. Dictator Kim Jong Un called for this launch and observed as it was carried out.

This weekend, North Korea successfully tested a medium long-range strategic missile, a weapon their official Korean Central News Agency says can carry a nuclear warhead.

I’m going to tread carefully here, because I know at least some of you are Star Wars fans, and my interest in the franchise does not extend beyond the ewoks (they’re very cute). But methinks we can all agree that only a fan of absurd devotion—and absurd wealth—would purchase a life-size replica of Darth Vader’s helmet …

Welcome to Barf Bag, a daily politics roundup to help you sort through the chaotic Trumpian news cycle.

What great fortune for Donald Trump, whose ascendancy to president-elect has landed him in a series of meetings that mysteriously correlate to business deals he and his family are trying to land.

Weird tropes find their way into anime, and I’m not just talking about tentacle porn. Judgment aside, cat girls, superpowered transfer students and Vespa-riding aliens are objectively a little eyebrow-raising as television plot hooks. To be an anime fan, you get used to things you wouldn’t normally poke with a…

There’s a lot to learn about loss, grief and closure—maybe a myth—in “The Lost Ones,” Jennifer Percy’s cover story for the latest New York Times Magazine. Its two main subjects, Yuko Takamatsu and Masaaki Narita, have spent the last couple of years diving in the waters of Onagawa, Japan, searching for the bodies of…

Citizens of Tokyo have just elected their first female governor, former defense minister and Liberal Democratic Party member Yuriko Koike. She will preside over Tokyo’s government during the 2020 Summer Olympic Games, to be held in the Japanese capital.

Early Tuesday morning, a man attacked residents of the Tsukui Yamayuri-En disability facility in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, killing at least 19 and wounding approximately 25.

7-year-old Yamato Tanooka was found alive, exhausted but uninjured, early Friday morning in a remote cabin in the mountains of Hokkaido, Japan—nearly a full week after being left by his parents on the side of the road.

A Japanese pop star is alive but in critical condition after being stabbed some 20 times by an enraged stalker. Mayu Tomita, 20, was attacked by Tomohiro Iwazaki, 27, who reportedly told police he “lost his temper.”

How convenient—the perfect style inspiration for an April weekend when the summer can’t decide whether it wants to be warm or cold or what.

Nintendo employee Alison Rapp, who’s been a target of harassment over censorship controversies in recent months, said on Twitter that she has been fired. “Today, the decision was made,” she wrote. “I am no longer a good, safe representative of Nintendo, and my employment has been terminated.”

A U.S. Navy sailor stationed in Okinawa has been arrested and is being charged with the rape of a Japanese woman, a 40-year-old tourist from the prefecture of Kyushu. Okinawan authorities say the sailor, 24-year-old Justin Castellanos, found the victim drunk and asleep in a hotel lobby.

Just a quick peek at what folks were wearing on Tokyo’s Ginza Street in 1967.

Two women who were forced to work as “comfort women” (read: sex slaves) for the Japanese army during World War II have publicly criticized the deal made between Japan and South Korea on their behalf.

Giant squid are some of the most elusive creatures of the sea, having never been caught alive on camera until 2012. Which is why it’s so strange that this bold guy is just hanging around the harbor in Toyama, Japan. U OK, Squid?

At the end of World War II, an estimated 200,000 South Korean women were forced by the Imperial Japanese Army to work in brothels as “comfort women,” a euphemized term for sexual slavery, for the Japanese military. On Monday, South Korea accepted Japan’s reconciliatory apology and offer to contribute 1 billion yen…

Japan’s sushi industry is notoriously male-dominated, but a group of intrepid female chefs have begun to combat the sexism preventing women from working in the field. In Tokyo’s Akihabara district you’ll now find a restaurant called Nadeshiko Sushi — and every single employee is female.

Japanese mountaineer Kei Taniguchi died last week while climbing the Daisetsuzan range in northern Japan.