A magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck central northeastern Japan this Monday, prompting Japanese authorities to activate a tsunami alert, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).

Northeastern Japan is on tsunami alert after a magnitude 7.4 earthquake was recorded in the last few hours. The country's Meteorological Agency (JMA) has warned of the possibility of waves up to three meters high in various prefectures, from Hokkaido to Fukushima, and the government has ordered the evacuation of coastal and riverine areas.

As they said at the end of Hell or High WaterSometimes we do crazy things for our children. In the last year, in fact, two of the most talked-about films feature a father on an epic quest to find his lost daughter: Sirado and One battle after another, with a classic narrative structure that comes from Desert Centaurs, clear. A daughter in Tokyo It has less of a sense of adventure and more of injustice, but it's also about a father who does strange things to find his daughter. In this case, working as a taxi driver in Tokyo for nine years (a Frenchman in Japan: a curious and unusual approach to immigration issues) hoping to stumble across her someday, perhaps hailing a fare on a street corner in the Japanese capital.

At Ukedo Elementary School, time didn't freeze with the earth's tremor at 2:46 p.m., but with the ocean's agonizing pounding an hour later. The hands of the classroom clocks, connected to a centralized mechanism that ensured their synchronization, continued moving with mechanical indifference as the outside world crumbled. It wasn't the magnitude 9 earthquake, but the violent arrival of the first tsunami wave, between 3:37 p.m. and 3:38 p.m. on that March 11, 2011, that caused the final rupture. That exact instant, forever etched in the metal and glass of the stopped clocks, marks a point of no return: the moment when the force of nature decided to halt time for an entire town.

The Fukushima fifty, referring to the workers who remained inside the nuclear power plant after the March 2011 tsunami, were actually sixty-nine workers. The round number made for a more attractive headline. Fifteen years after that great catastrophe that caused more than twenty thousand deaths, a documentary pays tribute to that team. They acted convinced that risking their own lives was a debt they owed to the citizens. But the disappointment with Tepco's negligence meant that Japanese society did not perceive them as heroes.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange experienced one of its most turbulent sessions in recent years on Monday. The benchmark Nikkei 225 index plummeted more than 4,000 points, a drop of approximately 7%, amid investor panic over the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery for global oil trade. This plunge comes just a week after the index reached new all-time highs, a stark contrast that illustrates how quickly the energy crisis can reverse market optimism. Faced with escalating tensions, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi announced that the government is considering tapping into strategic petroleum reserves and implementing measures to curb rising gasoline prices, which could exceed 210 yen per liter, up from 138 yen just a few weeks ago.

Japan ended 2025 with a record high in public debt, reaching 1.34217 trillion yen (approximately €8.6 trillion), according to data released this week by the Ministry of Finance. This figure, which is more than double the country's gross domestic product (GDP) of approximately 660 trillion yen (€4.2 trillion), comes at a crucial time, with the newly elected government pursuing a clearly expansionary fiscal policy while the Bank of Japan begins a gradual normalization of interest rates. The debt volume increased by 24.5 trillion yen (approximately €157 billion) compared to the previous year, driven primarily by increased spending on social security, defense, and debt servicing, amid rising sovereign debt yields. Of the total accumulated, 1.197 trillion yen (7.7 trillion euros) corresponds to government bonds, in addition to 44 trillion yen in loans (239 billion euros) and 100 trillion yen in financing bonds (541 billion euros in exchange for financing).

Japanese voters have given a resounding victory to the Prime Minister's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Sanae Takaichi in the legislative elections held this Sunday. The two-thirds supermajority achieved by the ruling bloc gives Takaichi a key to dismantling the cornerstone of postwar Japan: constitutional pacifism. This result places the government in a position of strength unprecedented in decades, decisively expanding its room for maneuver and leaving the opposition at its weakest point since 1945.

Japan will hold snap general elections this Sunday, just over a year after the last ones when Sanae Takaichi She has barely been in government for three months. An unusual timeline even in a system accustomed to a certain degree of volatility: the decision is eminently political and reveals the new prime minister's willingness to submit her project, which points to a break with some historical consensuses, to electoral validation.

The anti-nuclear consensus that has defined Japan for almost six decades has begun to crack. A senior cabinet official Prime Minister Sanae TakaichiAn advisor on national security policy stated to several local media outlets that the country "should possess nuclear weapons." This personal opinion, despite being labeled "unrealistic" in the short term, has reopened an extremely sensitive debate in the only country in the world to have been the victim of atomic attacks during wartime. The statements come at a time of heightened geopolitical tension in East Asia and coincide with the ongoing review of the national security strategy promoted by the Takaichi administration, known for its hardline defense stances and its close ties to the most hardline sectors of US security policy. Although the government officially insists that it remains committed to the three anti-nuclear principles—not possessing, not producing, and not allowing the entry of nuclear weapons—the ambiguity of the rhetoric and the internal debate have triggered political, social, and diplomatic alarm bells.

Everything was going well on the day of Kimitake Hiraoka's death. He and his gang of Tetonkai fanatics—the fascist paramilitary militia that Kimitake himself had founded two years prior—had successfully infiltrated the barracks and tied the commander's hands and feet. Dressed in the scarlet uniform of the army and adorned with the bandana on which the kanji "Serve the country for seven lifetimes," Kimitake Hiraoka walked to the final stage of his life. He had watched his nation slowly die for far too long, dishonored by defeat in World War II and humiliated after accepting the fate imposed by the United States. From the balcony of the Tokyo headquarters in the Shinjuku district, he unfurled a manifesto and began to read his demands. pathos It was about to come true. Not what he wanted, but what he had written so many pages about before his death.

The Japanese state breaks record income from estates without heirs amid lonely aging, declining marriage rates, and the erosion of traditional families They turn loneliness into a structural emergency. The Japanese tax agency is collecting more inheritances from elderly people who die completely alone, without spouses, children, or relatives who can or want to claim their assets. In 2024 alone, the state absorbed 129 billion yen (about 700 million euros) from estates without heirs, almost four times more than a decade earlier, a record that illustrates the extent to which the country is sinking into a silent but profound crisis.

The vacuum cleaner is making a strange noise. It's barely picking up any dust. James Dyson stops in the middle of the dining room, turns it off, and bends down. He opens the lid, takes out the bag, replaces it, and tries again. Nothing: the dust has accumulated inside the bag's fabric and completely clogged it. Dyson mulls over the problem. It's the late seventies. Dyson lives in Bath, in southwest England, and is an industrial designer. For some years now, he's been working on developing all sorts of products, like the Ballbarrow, a wheelbarrow with a spherical wheel, designed to improve stability on construction sites and in gardens. He takes the vacuum cleaner to the workshop and completely disassembles it: he's looking for the source of the problem. If the suction disappears, it's because something, somewhere along its path, is blocking it.

Music plays in a wedding hall in western Japan as Yurina Noguchi, in a white dress and tiara, wipes away tears, processing the words of her future husband: an AI-generated personality who looked out from a smartphone screen. "At first, Klaus was just someone to talk to, but we gradually grew closer," says the 32-year-old call center operator, referring to the artificial intelligence personality. "I started developing feelings for Klaus. We began dating, and after a while, he proposed. I accepted, and now we're a couple."

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck off the northeast coast of Japan. Authorities issued evacuation orders affecting approximately 90,000 residents, and the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori, and Iwateha issued a tsunami warning, which was downgraded a few hours later. The country's Meteorological Agency initially warned that waves could reach three meters in height, but those observed so far ranged between 20 and 70 centimeters. The quake struck at 11:15 p.m. local time on Monday, off the coast of Aomori Prefecture in the northeast of the archipelago. The epicenter of the earthquake, which left at least seven people injured, was located at a depth of 50 kilometers. The intensity, registered as 6 out of 7 on the Japanese seismic scale, was such that it made it impossible to stand or move without crawling.

In recent weeks, the Japanese government has accelerated a restrictive shift in immigration policies that directly affects foreigners living in the country. With drastic fee increases, new administrative obstacles And with increased surveillance of non-Japanese residents, Sanae Takaichi's administration presents the package as a mechanism to ensure "fairness and compliance with the law," but the measures have sparked concern among foreign communities and civil rights experts.

In Kathmandu, amid clouds of tear gas, Hundreds of young people raise a pirate flag with a straw hat, a symbol of the crew from the cartoon series. One PieceIn Jakarta, truck drivers, students, and artists are defying the government with the same symbol. What began as a Japanese series about pirates has become in a global emblem of political resistancePopular culture, often dismissed as light entertainment, has seeped into the realm of protest and dissent. As researcher Alba Torrents, lecturer at the Faculty of Communication Studies at the UAB and expert in Japanese animated series, explains, "l'anime It has become a global cultural language: it is no longer just a Japanese entertainment product, but a shared space in which new generations project common values, emotions, and imaginaries.” Corruption. Truckers, students, and artists began to raise the pirate icon as a symbol of unity and defiance against the government. Its spread was meteoric: in a few days, the Jolly Roger The pirate flag (traditionally known as the "pirate flag," typically featuring a black background and a skull and crossbones) spread from social media to the streets, to the point that some authorities labeled it a threat to national unity. Despite attempts at censorship and official warnings, the flag became established as a shared language of dissent and political creativity.

Three years ago, Danilo Yavhushin trained every day at a gym in his hometown of Vinnitsia, in central Ukraine. Danilo was 17 and a somewhat unusual boy, having excelled in judo and Greco-Roman wrestling. He had told his parents and coaches that he wanted to change disciplines: he wanted to try sumo after seeing a live exhibition. Yavhushin had enjoyed Japan's most sacred sport so much that, with the help of a judo coach, he built a training space similar to the dirt arenas where sumo matches are held. But everything changed when Russia attacked Ukraine three years ago. Because Danilo was a minor, he wasn't supposed to go to the front lines. He and his family managed to flee to Germany after witnessing Russian missiles strike their city, damaging the gym where he trained. It was then, in the midst of his escape, that Yavhuschin sent a message: "Can I come live in Japan?" The message was received by Arata Yamanaka, one of the best young sumo wrestlers. The two had met at a Junior World Sumo Championship when they were only 15 years old. They had exchanged contact information and kept in touch. "I thought it would be a shame to end my sporting career after the invasion," he explained in an NHK television documentary. "I liked sumo, and I felt I should try to compete in sumo somehow, given the path I had chosen," he added. So he asked Yamanaka for help, and Yamanaka responded. He took him into his home and arranged for him to train with the team at the prestigious Kansai University, where Yamanaka was the captain. After a few months, he managed to be accepted into the Ajigawa stable, based in Tokyo, although initially they didn't want foreign wrestlers. At the highest level, athletes live in these so-called stableThese are a kind of club where young people live, cook, do housework, and train hard, learning discipline through sometimes harsh training methods. The young Ukrainian learned Japanese and worked hard, earning the opportunity to participate in increasingly important tournaments.

The honeymoon of Sanae Takaichi, the first woman to hold the position of head of government of Japan, It has vanished abruptly. A statement he made in response to a parliamentary question in the Diet, Japan's parliament, in which he warned that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could jeopardize the country's survival and justify a joint military response with the United States, sparked a diplomatic crisis with unpredictable consequences. Beijing denounced the statements as "gross interference" in its affairs and reacted with unprecedented vehemence.

The Japan's new Prime Minister, Sanae TakaichiShe is known for being a tireless worker. She often avoids social gatherings and openly rejects the idea of work-life balance. But even by her own standards, she surprised everyone by leaving her Tokyo residence shortly after 3 a.m. to convene a meeting with advisors before an appearance before Parliament.