TOKYO - The following is the latest list of selected news summaries by Kyodo News.
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BOJ Sept. rate hike signal led U.S. to join Japan in forex intervention
TOKYO - Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda's signal on July 31 that interest rates could be raised as early as September was the decisive factor behind the Japan-U.S. joint yen-buying intervention shortly afterward to halt the yen's fall, Japanese government sources said Monday.
The U.S. side viewed favorably Ueda's explicit remarks about "speeding up the pace of rate hikes," if necessary, at a press conference following a two-day policy meeting in Tokyo and decided to join Japan in the first coordinated yen-buying intervention in 28 years during New York trading hours on July 31, the sources said.
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Japan successfully launches H3 rocket carrying positioning satellite
TANEGASHIMA, Japan - The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency on Tuesday successfully launched an H3 rocket and put a positioning satellite into orbit, marking the second successful launch in a row of Japan's flagship rocket after a failure last December.
The H3 rocket No. 9 lifted off from the Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima, a small island in southwestern Japan, early Tuesday, carrying the Michibiki No. 7 positioning satellite, part of the country's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System used to provide location information for smartphones and vehicle navigation.
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Stranded climbers leave mountain resort as Japan braces for typhoon
TOKYO - All climbers stranded after a bridge was destroyed by a landslide over the weekend in central Japan's mountainous Nagano Prefecture have descended, local authorities said Monday, as a typhoon approaches the country.
Japan's weather agency is warning that Typhoon Chan-hom may cross the Japanese archipelago after making landfall somewhere between southern Tohoku and Kanto-Koshin, which includes both Tokyo ana Nagano, on Tuesday evening or later, calling for caution against landslides, flooding in low-lying areas and swollen rivers.
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Climber traffic falls 30% in Japan's bear-hit Hokkaido, Tohoku
TOKYO - Climber traffic fell more than 30 percent in northern Japan's Hokkaido and Tohoku regions between April and June compared with the same period two years earlier, with the sharpest declines seen in areas hit hard by bear attacks, an analysis of smartphone location data on major mountains showed Monday.
The data on climbers to Japan's "hyakumeizan" or 100 famous mountains showed the number in the three-month period fell 34 percent in the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu and 32 percent on the island of Hokkaido from the same period in 2024. The overall decline across the 100 mountains nationwide was 18 percent.
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Wartime PM, war criminal Hideki Tojo's diaries donated to Tokyo library
TOKYO - Around 300 documents belonging to Hideki Tojo, Japan's wartime prime minister who was executed in 1948 as a war criminal for crimes against peace, have been donated by family members to a Tokyo library and made available to the public, Kyodo News have learned.
The documents including handwritten notes and letters gifted to the National Diet Library include Tojo's personal thoughts and criticisms of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, established by the Allies to try Japanese war criminals between 1946 and 1948.
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Quake-hit Suntory beer factory to resume operations in 3 to 4 months
TOKYO - Japan's leading beverage manufacturer Suntory Holdings Ltd. said Monday it expects it will take about three to four months to restore its plant in Kashima, Kumamoto Prefecture, after it was damaged by the magnitude-7.1 earthquake on July 28.
The firm, which sells various beverages ranging from alcoholic drinks to mineral water, confirmed that output equipment and buildings had sustained damage, saying it aims to resume production before the end of the year.
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A-bomb victims' group calls for world free of nukes on its 70th anniversary
NAGASAKI - Nihon Hidankyo, Japan's leading group of atomic bomb survivors, renewed its pledge Monday to continue its efforts toward realizing a world free of nuclear weapons as it marked the 70th anniversary of its founding.
"It is each citizen of world who will build a human society without nuclear weapons and wars. We will keep calling for it as long as we are alive," the group, formally known as the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, said in a statement.
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Table tennis: Japan's T.League eyes more exposure after success in Taiwan
TOKYO - Japan's T.League opened its ninth season with record attendance in Taiwan in late July as the table tennis league looks to further raise its profile overseas.
In the league's first games held abroad, Top Otome Pingpongs Nagoya beat Kinoshita Abyell Kanagawa 3-1 in the women's opener, and Kinoshita-Meister Tokyo downed T.T Saitama 4-0 in the men's, with nearly 7,000 excited fans cheering at Hsinchu County Stadium.
