Monday marks the 17th anniversary of a train derailment in Amagasaki, Hyogo prefecture, in western Japan. The accident killed 107 people and injured more than 500 others.
In 2005, a commuter train on the Fukuchiyama Line derailed and crashed into a building after failing to negotiate a curve.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government reported 3,141 new coronavirus infections on Monday.
The tally was down by about 340 from a week ago.
A Japanese woman, Tanaka Kane, recognized as the world's oldest person, has died at the age of 119.
Officials of Fukuoka Prefecture, western Japan, say Tanaka died on Tuesday of last week at a local hospital. She had been living in an elderly care facility in Fukuoka City.
Japan's transport ministry has started a special audit of the operator of a tour boat that went missing off the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido.
Four ministry officials began the investigation at the office of Shiretoko Pleasure Cruiser on Sunday evening.
A vaccine maker in Kumamoto Prefecture, southwestern Japan, says it will launch this month a clinical trial of its coronavirus vaccine for children under five.
KM Biologics said at a news conference on Wednesday that the vaccine is an inactivated vaccine, the same type as influenza shots.
Japan's health ministry on Tuesday officially authorized a coronavirus vaccine developed by US pharmaceutical company Novavax to be used for people 18 and older.
The vaccine is the fourth to be approved for use in Japan.
Japanese immigration authorities say as of April 17, a total of 661 evacuees from Ukraine who have fled the Russian invasion have come to Japan.
The authorities say 20 of them flew in on a government plane from Poland on April 5. Another 20 traveled on commercial flights on April 9 and 16, using seats secured by Japan's government. The remaining 621 came by other means.
The Coast Guard and the Self-Defense Forces have expanded the search area for people who went missing in a boat accident off the Shiretoko Peninsula in Japan's northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido.
The 19-ton tour boat, Kazu One, with 26 people on board, went missing on Saturday after making a distress call.
A South Korean delegate says South Korea will sincerely hold talks with Japan on bilateral issues to mend the ties between the two countries. He also says both countries need to make efforts to settle the issues.
South Korea's National Assembly Deputy Speaker Chung Jin-suk spoke to reporters after meeting Japan's Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa in Tokyo on Monday.
NHK has launched an online service in the Ukrainian language that provides tips for daily life in Japan. The service is for people who have evacuated from Ukraine.
NHK World-Japan set up a new website on Monday. Its URL is https://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/uk/news/tips/
A delegation sent by South Korea's President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol met with senior members of the Japan-South Korea parliamentarians' union in Tokyo on Monday. They agreed to work together to improve relations between the two countries.
The delegation led by National Assembly Deputy Speaker Chung Jin-suk met with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's Nukaga Fukushiro, a former finance minister who heads the union. Former education minister Nakagawa Masaharu of the Constitutional Democratic Party also attended the meeting.
Officials at a welfare foundation say Ukrainian evacuees without relatives or acquaintances in Japan face challenges in managing underlying illnesses and securing learning opportunities for children.
Members of the Foundation for the Welfare and Education of the Asian People spoke about the situation in an interview with NHK.
Japanese companies with automatic translation technology are making their services available in the Ukrainian language to help support the daily lives of evacuees from Ukraine.
Precision equipment maker Konica Minolta is offering translation services to municipalities. When a person speaks to a computer terminal, artificial intelligence translates the speech into the designated language and reads it out.
A child passenger aboard a sightseeing boat that went missing off the coast of Hokkaido on Saturday has been found unconscious.
The child was rescued by a Japan Coast Guard patrol ship around 11 p.m. on Sunday, and transported to a hospital.