Seven Japanese research groups repeated two landmark University of Tokyo senolytics experiments under blinded conditions and found no effect. The original team's rebuttal ran the same day, in the same journal.

Japan's anime studios billed a record $2.56 billion in 2025, clearing 400 billion yen for the first time. Teikoku Databank says 2026 could bring the first decline since 2021, in a year when 34.6% already ran a loss.

Kohei Ikeda, game director on Tekken 7 and 8, has joined Katsuhiro Harada's SNK-backed VS Studio, putting the three men who ran Tekken 7 under one roof. The response is less unanimous than it looks.

ispace and Mitsubishi Heavy will launch the ULTRA lunar lander on an H3 rocket in 2028, with no rideshare. Of the 18.7 billion yen Mission 3 expects to bring in, 12 billion is a government subsidy.

Pacific fishing nations agreed on August 18, 2026 to raise the quota for bluefin tuna over 30 kilograms by 25 percent, to 14,836 tons in the western Pacific, and to cut the quota for juveniles by 6 percent.

A shrine in Iwakuni held a memorial for 281 white snakes that died in one year, the most since records begin in 2009. Only 804 remain in the society's care, and this sacred albino population now breeds as a closed group.

Mice spent two days in artificial hibernation and lost more than half the synapses in the hippocampus, yet still knew where the food was. What survived was not the big connections but the tightly clustered ones.

From November 1, 2026, Japan drops instant tax exemption at the register. Visitors pay full price and get the 10% consumption tax back only after customs confirms the goods are leaving.

At Disney's D23, Tetsuya Nomura and Tai Yasue promised Kingdom Hearts IV arrives in 2027 with absolutely no delay. Given the studio's history, that is an unusual thing to say out loud.