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July 03, 2026
 

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AGING

The last two students at Yumoto Junior High School attend their graduation ceremony in Ten-ei Village, Fukushima Prefecture, in March 2023.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 19, 2026
We have to stop discussing Japan’s birthrate like this
Declining Asian fertility is often framed negatively: a backlash against a crushing society. When it happens in the U.S., though, it’s young women taking control over their lives.
A small group of people carry rare genes that slow aging itself, protecting them from major diseases even when their lifestyles are far from ideal. Scientists hope to replicate these protective effects.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2026
Why some people live to 100 despite doing everything wrong
A recent study showed that longevity is roughly 50% genetic and 50% environmental — a substantially higher genetic contribution than earlier research indicated.
At 85 years old, Makiko Kimura still works about four times a month at a local snack shop — not to make money in retirement but as a way to stay in touch with her community.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Mar 7, 2026
Working overtime: ‘Silver Jinzai’ centers keep Japan’s seniors employed
With about 3 in 10 adults currently over the retirement age, community agencies keeping seniors in part-time work bring both personal and economic benefits.
Former Government Pension Investment Fund President Masataka Miyazono joined Hulic last year as an adviser to focus on agricultural investments as the sector faces a rapidly aging and shrinking workforce.
BUSINESS
Mar 6, 2026
Former chief of $2 trillion pension fund joins developer growing tomatoes
Masataka Miyazono aims to help make Japan’s agricultural sector more productive in order to boost sustainability in the country.
A care worker demonstrates exercises for residents at a nursing home in Tokyo. A decision on raising the share of nursing-care costs paid by older people has been postponed again by the government.
JAPAN / Society / FOCUS
Feb 24, 2026
Expansion of nursing care costs delayed again
The government is shelving until fiscal 2026 a plan to widen the scope of those required to make a 20% copayment, concerned the move could add to the burden of higher costs.
Singapore’s stalled birthrate reflects a broader pattern across wealthy Asian economies where higher living standards, shifting values and gender imbalances have made low fertility persistent and resistant to quick policy fixes.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 10, 2026
Why Asia can’t undo decades of falling fertility rates
The challenge is shared by most successful nations. Ultralow fertility is a byproduct of rapid development and elevated living standards.
Masako (left) and Takeyuki Satokawa sit on a ridge by one of their rice paddies as they recall their years of farming in Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima Prefecture.
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Hiroshima
Feb 2, 2026
‘It would only burden our children’: Aging farmers quit rice production
Training a successor is important, but most farmers have been too busy trying to survive instead, one member of an agricultural cooperative corporation said.
Shares of Next Generation Technology Group, which focuses on buying manufacturing firms without a clear succession plan, rose 202% since their listing last February.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 30, 2026
Japan’s succession crisis yields country’s best-performing IPO
Shares of Next Generation Technology Group, which focuses on buying manufacturing firms without a clear succession plan, rose 202% since their listing last February.
A viral check-in app that alerts contacts if users fail to confirm they are alive has exposed rising loneliness, demographic anxiety and unmet eldercare needs, showing the next breakout tech hit may come from confronting social isolation.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 25, 2026
Forget DeepSeek, dying alone is China’s latest tech obsession
The interface is almost aggressively plain. Users, largely people living alone, tap to confirm they are still alive.
Volunteer Shunichi Hirata (right) checks a heater as he chats with Takako Shimizu, who manages residents’ mutual support activities in Kakamigahara, Gifu Prefecture.
JAPAN / Society / Regional voices: Chubu
Jan 19, 2026
Mutual support in Gifu housing estate offers model case for aging society
From helping with hospital visits to even being a playmate for board games, residents of Yagiyama district help one another with small everyday problems.
Kimono-clad young men walk on their way to a venue during their Coming of Age Day celebration ceremony in Yokohama on Monday.
JAPAN
Jan 12, 2026
Number of young people in Japan becoming adults drops to second-lowest ever
Some 1.09 million people — 560,000 men and 530,000 women — reached adulthood as of Jan. 1, according to government data.
Older adults with no remaining teeth had a mortality risk about 1.7 times higher than those with 21 or more teeth, according to Japanese researchers.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jan 5, 2026
Dental hygiene key to predicting mortality, Japanese researchers find
Studies concluded that poor oral health among older adults is closely linked with higher mortality rates and a higher risk of requiring long-term care.
As Japan’s population ages, fewer workers will be supporting more dependents, reshaping the country’s social and economic balance.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Dec 29, 2025
On to 2050: Life in a shrinking Japan
By 2050, Japan’s youth will inherit a transformed country, reshaped by population decline, longer lives and unprecedented demographic imbalance.
Keiji Minatoya, from Kitaakita, Akita Prefecture, reenacts the time he was attacked by a black bear in 2023. Japan’s recent battle with bears has revealed issues that will continue to present challenges for the Japanese government going forward.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 26, 2025
Japan’s growing bear crisis reveals deeper issues
Currently, there are only around 220,000 licensed hunters in Japan, substantially lower than the 532,265 registered in 1970.
A scientist looks at hypometabolic and hypoperfusion patterns at the single-subject level from a patient suffering from Alzheimer's disease at a hospital in Geneva in June 2023.
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 12, 2025
Alzheimer’s drug hunt learns from cancer fight’s multi-target playbook
Just two drugs are widely approved to slow Alzheimer’s — Eli Lilly’s Kisunla and Leqembi from Eisai and Biogen.
Among older Japanese people who die, a rising number are unmarried and without close relatives.
JAPAN
Dec 8, 2025
Japan’s isolated elderly leave record sums to government
In recent years, the aging population has seen soaring numbers of deaths and more people reach the end of their lives with no immediate family.
Fostering technical, digital and social skills across all working-age groups, including older workers, is essential for Asian economies to harness AI effectively.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 5, 2025
Can AI be Asia’s next growth engine?
Using new digital technologies — and, in particular, AI — Asia can invigorate productivity growth, ease labor shortages and extend people’s working lives.
Masato Edamitsu, the 60-year-old founder of Shinshin Kenko Club, training and guiding his client
JAPAN / Science & Health / FOCUS
Dec 4, 2025
Japan’s fitness industry is catering to a new clientele: Health-conscious seniors
A fitness survey released by the Sports Agency in October of this year found that seniors today are fitter than they were in 1998.
A symposium promoting the passing on of memories of the war organized by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, on Aug. 3 in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, attended by actor Fumiya Takahashi (second from right) and others.
JAPAN / Society / FOCUS
Dec 2, 2025
Japan works to preserve and pass on wartime memories as witnesses age
In August, for the first time, over half of participants at the Japan’s national memorial service for those who died in World War II were born after it ended.
U.S. President Donald Trump disembarks the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier before delivering remarks for the Navy's 250th anniversary in Norfolk, Virginia, on Oct. 5.
WORLD / Politics
Nov 26, 2025
Shorter days, signs of fatigue: Trump faces realities of aging in office
Trump, 79, is the oldest person to be elected to the presidency.
Japan triples departure tax in push to combat overtourism
Tourists in Yanaka Ginza, Tokyo, on Wednesday. Japan tripled its International Tourist Tax (departure tax) to ¥3,000 from ¥1,000 on Wednesday for all travelers leaving Japan, regardless of nationality.
‘My dream is broken’: Japan visa rules push out foreign residents
A man orders from a kebab shop in the Okubo district in Tokyo.
More facilities in Japan placing sanitary bins in men’s restrooms
A sanitary bin with an awareness sticker placed in a men's restroom in the Nagasaki Municipal Government building
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
Japanese-language education is at a turning point
The country is gradually transforming Japanese-language education from a volunteer-driven system into a professional, government-supported network to better serve its growing foreign population. 
Six of the best: rikishi of note in each sumo division
Kazuma (right) faces off against future <i>yokozuna</i> Onosato during the All Japan Amateur Sumo Championships at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo in December 2020.
Some startups see opportunity in an aging Japan
Yasmin Baba, CTO of Amilis, wins the Grand Prize at the Pitch2Tokyo Grand Final on Feb. 19.
Japan’s fertility system offers few safe paths for same-sex couples
A Tokyo Pride parade participant holds a sign that says "we want to be a married couple, not a couple."
Life inside Japan’s largest prison for women
Western-style rooms spanning the size of four tatami mats with hardwood floors, a toilet and soft mattresses on bed frames are designated for foreign nationals and those with health conditions at Tochigi Prison.
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.
What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival
By Alex K.T. Martin

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