Japan's health ministry says 13,569 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Tokyo on Saturday.

The daily tally is up 4,112 from a week ago.

People enjoyed viewing autumn foliage inside the Imperial Palace in Tokyo for the first time in three years as a section has been reopened to the public.

Starting in 2014, people were granted access to Inui Street during the spring cherry blossom season and in the autumn when the leaves change color. But viewings were suspended when the coronavirus pandemic began.

Defense officials in Japan say the country should possess the ability to launch counterstrikes.

They presented the view on Friday at a meeting of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and coalition partner Komeito.

Births in Japan are on a record-low pace. The health ministry says fewer than 600,000 babies were born from January through September this year.

At this rate, fewer than 800,000 will be born in Japan in a calendar year for the first time since record-keeping began in 1899.

The Japan men's soccer team faces Costa Rica on Sunday at the FIFA World Cup, and expectations are running high among fans heading to the tournament in Qatar.

At Narita Airport near Tokyo on Friday afternoon, a 66-year-old man said he was already excited, adding that he is optimistic about the Samurai Blue advancing to the knockout stage.

A labor dispute arbitration body of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government has ordered the operator of the food delivery service Uber Eats to negotiate with its deliverers' labor union.

The union formed by some Uber Eats deliverers demanded improvements in working conditions after the operator unilaterally lowered compensation for delivery staff.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency plans to reprimand officials over data tampering in an experiment on stress caused by living in space.

JAXA said on Friday that two researchers were involved in the misconduct during the experiment carried out in 2016 and 2017 and involving 40 participants.

The widow of a deceased Finance Ministry official said she is disappointed with a civil court ruling that failed to reveal any information about how her husband was pressured to falsify government documents.

Akagi Masako's husband, Toshio, committed suicide in 2018. The Osaka District Court on Friday dismissed her claims for damages from a former high-ranking Finance Ministry bureaucrat. Sagawa Nobuhisa had allegedly ordered the tampering of documents related to the sale of state-owned land to school operator Moritomo Gakuen.

The seven-day average number of coronavirus cases in Japan has been on the rise for six straight weeks. Although the country is in its eighth wave of infection, the rate of increase is slowing in most prefectures.

The nationwide figure for the seven-day period until Thursday is up 8 percent from a week before.

A court in Japan has cleared a former high-ranking Finance Ministry bureaucrat of liability for compensation relating to the 2018 suicide of a regional official who was allegedly pressured to falsify government documents.

The Osaka District Court on Friday dismissed a claim for damages filed by the official's widow, Akagi Masako.

A Chinese high court has finalized a life sentence handed down to a Japanese man for drug smuggling.

The Higher People's Court in the southern province of Guangdong on Friday upheld a lower court sentencing of Sakuragi Takuma in 2019. Sakuragi is a former assemblyman of Inazawa City in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan.

Japan's Reconstruction Minister Akiba Kenya has refuted a report that he allegedly violated the election law during the Lower House election campaign in October last year.

Online magazine Friday Digital reported on Wednesday that Akiba provided remuneration to his state-paid secretaries for assistance during his campaign. In addition, it said that his election expenditure report included costs for distribution of leaflets, which is also not allowed.

Japanese judicial officials say that records related to disbandment orders for two religious groups have been destroyed by the district courts that were storing them.

One of the groups was the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out the deadly gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in the 1990s.

Japan plans to start the wide distribution of a domestically developed oral COVID-19 drug, Xocova, from next Monday, earlier than initially planned.

The Japanese government approved emergency authorization of Xocova on Tuesday. The first Japanese COVID-19 drug is made by pharmaceutical firm Shionogi. Xocova can be used to treat even mild symptoms.