The Japanese government has released revised figures for the January-to-March GDP. They show the country's economy shrinking at an annualized rate of minus 2.2 percent in real terms.
The number released by the Cabinet Office is the same as the previous figure of minus 2.2 percent.
The number of confirmed coronavirus infections in Japan on Wednesday topped 1,200. It's the highest daily total and the first time the symbolic 1,000 threshold has been crossed.
Officials in the western prefecture of Osaka reported 221 cases on Wednesday. It's the highest ever daily total there and the first time the figure has surpassed 200.
Japan's daily number of confirmed coronavirus cases topped 1,100 on Wednesday. It's the highest daily total and the first time the symbolic 1,000 threshold has been crossed.
Officials in the western prefecture of Osaka reported 221 cases on Wednesday. It's the highest ever daily total there, and the first time the figure has surpassed 200.
New coronavirus cases are again rising in Japan. The nation's daily tally surpassed 900 for the first time on Thursday.
Tokyo reported 366 new cases, followed by Osaka Prefecture with 104, Aichi Prefecture with 97, Fukuoka Prefecture with 66 and Saitama Prefecture with 64.
The number of coronavirus deaths in Japan has now exceeded 1,000. The figure includes 13 deaths from the Diamond Princess cruise ship, that docked just outside Tokyo earlier this year.
Health authorities confirmed the latest deaths in the greater Tokyo area -- bringing the total to 1,001.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says its analysis of data collected by a weather satellite shows downpours that devastated a wide area in western Japan in early July were the heaviest in 20 years.
The agency's analysis shows the rainfall during the first 7 days of July in Kyushu and some parts of Chugoku and Shikoku hit a 20-year high for this time of the year.
Japan's health ministry is resuming the nation's coronavirus contact-tracing app service on Wednesday. The app has been under repair because of a glitch.
The smartphone app is designed to notify users who are thought to have been in close contact with someone infected with the virus.
A national facility devoted to the indigenous Ainu people and their culture opens on Sunday in their ancestral region of Hokkaido in northern Japan.
The National Ainu Museum and Park in Shiraoi has a museum, a hall for the performance of traditional Ainu dance and instrumental music, as well as a reconstructed Ainu village.
The top J1 division of Japan's professional soccer league, J.League, which postponed all official matches in February in response to the coronavirus outbreak, has resumed play without spectators.
At Saitama Stadium, where the match between Urawa Reds and Yokohama F. Marinos was held, league and club officials disinfected their hands and had their body temperatures measured with a thermograph.
Japan's Coast Guard says Chinese patrol ships have entered Japanese territorial waters on consecutive days and sailed for an extended time within them.
The officials say two Chinese patrol ships entered the waters off the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea after 4 p.m. on Thursday. They say the two ships repeatedly approached a Japanese fishing boat inside the territorial waters.
Japan's Government Pension Investment Fund says it posted a record loss for the January-March quarter as share prices plummeted worldwide due to the coronavirus pandemic. The loss for the quarter was 17.7 trillion yen, or about 165 billion dollars.
Other quarters of the year posted profits. The overall loss for the fiscal year through March was about 77 billion dollars. It is the first time since fiscal 2015 for the pension fund to record a loss for the full year, and the second largest annual loss since the global financial crisis in 2008.
Japan's health ministry resumed its coronavirus contact-tracing app service on Friday.
The ministry said on Thursday that it fixed a glitch which was found just days after the smartphone application was rolled out on June 19.
Heavy rain has pummeled the Tokai region, central Japan, prompting weather officials to warn of mudslides.
The accumulated rainfall for the one hour through 5 p.m. on Wednesday reached 32 millimeters in Kawazu Town in Shizuoka Prefecture.
A new expert panel of Japan's government has met for the first time to assess the effectiveness of anti-coronavirus measures.
The four-member panel held its first meeting on Wednesday. Among the members are Kyoto University Professor Yamanaka Shinya and Professor Emeritus at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies Kurokawa Kiyoshi.