Friday, July 24, 2026

The bears have Tokyo rethinking a 20-year-old rule. As maulings pile up, the capital is weighing lifting its ban on bear hunting for the first time in nearly two decades, part of a national scramble after a record 13 fatal attacks last fiscal year and at least five deaths in the Tohoku region since April (via The Japan Times). The government has set a target of capturing 3,800 bears in Tohoku alone this fiscal year (via Japan Today).

Japan's reputation as one of the world's safest countries is fraying at the edges. A wave of car thefts and brazen home intrusions, some feeding overseas export markets and organized over social media, is chipping away at the low-crime image the country has long prided itself on (via Japan Today).

A quiet Gunma neighborhood woke to horror. Police in Isesaki arrested a 42-year-old man on suspicion of killing his 6-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son at the family home (via Japan Today).

The shine is coming off Japan's first woman prime minister fast. Sanae Takaichi's cabinet approval slid to 49% in a Jiji Press poll, its lowest since she took office last October, while an Asahi Shimbun survey showed support tumbling to 53% from 60% a month earlier as voters fumed that she chased divisive legislation over cost-of-living relief (via The Japan Times).

Now comes the hard part. Takaichi's government is bracing for a bruising final week of a Diet session extended until July 25, with the ruling bloc rattled by the poll slide and the opposition smelling blood after the contentious revision of the Imperial House Law and the coalition's heavy-handed steering of parliament (via The Japan Times).

Japan's tax coffers have never been this full. General-account revenue hit a record 84.2 trillion yen (about $520 billion) for the fiscal year ended in March, the sixth straight record and the largest one-year jump ever, lifted by fat corporate profits and rising wages and prices (via The Japan Times).

It has been a white-knuckle July for Tokyo traders. The Nikkei 225 briefly cratered more than 4,100 points intraday on July 17 before steadying back near 66,000, while the yen keeps scraping levels last seen in 1986, hovering around 163 to the dollar on fiscal worries and the Japan-US rate gap (via The Japan Times).

The old guard of corporate Japan has a new king. SoftBank overtook Toyota earlier this summer to become the country's most valuable company for the first time in more than two decades, riding investor euphoria over its artificial intelligence bets (via The Japan Times).

Japan's chip moonshot is handing the blueprints to AI. Rapidus, the state-backed venture racing to mass-produce 2-nanometer chips, teamed up with US software firm Cadence to put agentic AI tools at the center of its chip design, betting the technology can claw back years of lost ground (via Nikkei Asia).

Corporate Japan is banding together to build its own brain. SoftBank, Sony and Honda are spearheading a sovereign AI foundation model trained on domestic data and running on Nvidia chips, a project that has pulled in dozens of manufacturers and up to 1 trillion yen in government backing (via Nikkei Asia).

Masayoshi Son thinks everyone is still lowballing AI. At SoftBank World on July 14, the founder said global AI infrastructure will swallow $5 trillion a year by 2040 as data centers, power supplies and humanoid robots multiply (via Nikkei Asia).

A 66-year-old ghost story just got a starry reboot. Netflix's live-action "The Human Vapor," based on Toho's 1960 cult film about a killer who dissolves into thin air, dropped July 4 and reunited Shun Oguri and Yu Aoi on screen for the first time in 23 years, the marquee title in a 2026 slate the streamer built by mining Toho's vault (via The Japan Times).

Van Gogh is crossing an ocean for a Tokyo summer. His "Cafe Terrace at Night" returns to Japan for the first time in two decades, while the Tachikawa Showa Kinen Park fireworks festival lights up the sky on July 25 for one of the season's biggest displays (via Tokyo Weekender).

Tokyo's galleries are leaning on big names this month. Pop-art icon Yoshitomo Nara is guest-curating a group show on contemporary ceramics, and a traveling exhibition, "I'm So Happy You Are Here," puts the spotlight on the pioneering women who shaped Japanese photography (via Tokyo Weekender).

The Dodgers just lost their two-way weapon on the mound, at least for now. Shohei Ohtani has been pulled from the rotation indefinitely with irritation in his left knee, and manager Dave Roberts says he cannot project when the star will pitch again after a last outing on July 3. The bat, at least, is fine: Ohtani has been raking with four homers in a recent eight-game stretch (via The Japan Times).

The wide-open Nagoya basho lost its breakout star. Sekiwake Aonishiki, who had surged into title contention, re-injured his foot and withdrew, throwing the race back to yokozuna Hoshoryu and Onosato as the grand sumo tournament grinds toward its Day 15 finish on July 26 (via The Japan Times).