Japan’s wasabi producers farm ‘green gold’

Ryusei Ouchi looks like your average skateboarder -- the baggy T-shirt, the jeans, the baseball hat. But he also skates with something else: a cane. The 21-year-old, who goes by Jido, has lost 95 percent of his eyesight because of a condition called retinitis pigmentosa.

 

North Korea escapee Hiroko Saito says she and 97,000 others were deceived into relocating to the North in the 1960s with promises of "paradise on Earth." Instead, she suffered starvation, repression and loss.

A boat crew casts a net into the seemingly clean waters off Japan's Izu peninsula, but not to catch fish -- they are scooping up microplastics to learn more about the pollution's impact on marine life.

After Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the US forcibly displaced 120,000 people of Japanese origin into 10 internment camps in the western United States. Eight decades on, our correspondents went to meet survivors, who reflected on their ordeal.

Japan's ageing society is forcing it to innovate in some unusual ways. Fifteen years ago, the western town of Hōki, where almost half the residents are aged over 65, started using recycled adult diapers to heat public baths and reduce energy bills. The project was highly successful and now the idea of turning diapers into fuel pellets has spread to other parts of Japan. Our correspondents report.

Glen Wood has come to symbolise a growing fight against "paternity harassment" in Japan. In of the of the country's very first cases of its kind, Wood alleged on-the-job harassment and unlawful dismissal from his position at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley after taking parental leave when his son was born prematurely in 2015. Last month, the Tokyo High Court rejected the Canadian native's appeal. In a 21-page ruling, the court defended the company's actions as "inevitable".

Germany, China and the US have all sent messages of support after the deadly shooting of the former prime minister. Shinzo Abe was Japan's longest-serving prime minister before leaving office in 2020.

Toru Kubota is the fifth foreign journalist detained in Myanmar since the military seized power in February 2021. He is accused of stoking dissent against the military government.

First female Japanese referee to officiate World Cup feels pressure as a pioneer.

Supporters of the Japanese national football team were seen cleaning up Qatar's Khalifa International Stadium after their win against Germany. They were also seen cleaning up rubbish after the opening match between Qatar and Ecuador.

In 1977, 13-year-old Megumi Yokota vanished from the Japanese coastal city of Niigata on her way home from school. Twenty-five years later, North Korea admitted that its agents had snatched her away, along with 12 other Japanese citizens, in order to train its spies.