Justice Minister Takashi Yamashita says he wants to have this Diet session pass a bill that will allow more foreign workers in Japan.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's judicial affairs panel approved a bill to revise the immigration control law on Monday.
The Japanese government may grant visas that allow highly skilled foreign workers to live with their family members without a specific limit on duration. The proposed measure is part of its efforts to ease the nation's labor shortage.
The government compiled the outline of draft legal revisions designed for the acceptance of more foreign professionals from next April. It will submit the proposals to a Diet session to be convened late this month.
Workers have begun removing nuclear fuel at the Monju fast-breeder reactor in central Japan.
The reactor, in the city of Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, is slated to be dismantled over a roughly 30-year period. The operator, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency, made the decision in 2016, citing the huge cost of ensuring safety.
UN special rapporteurs have called on the Japanese government to act quickly to protect workers engaged in decontamination of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
The 3 independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council jointly issued a statement on Thursday.
A survey shows that 35 workers in Japan's media industry experienced sexual harassment on 150 occasions.
Mayumi Taniguchi, an associate professor at Osaka International University who specializes in women's rights, and female journalists questioned workers at broadcasters, newspapers and other media organizations in late April.
While sometimes working overtime is necessary to get the job done and to meet deadlines, over in Japan, working overtime is sort of part of the working culture. Unsurprisingly this has some negative consequences to it, but it is also something that the Japanese government is trying to cut back on.
Toyota warned Kentucky workers building the Camry to cut costs or else, apparently looking for ways to increase the US plant’s efficiency which is also the company’s biggest in the world.
The Japanese car maker claims that they can build a Camry in Japan, ship it all the way to Kentucky and make more money than building one in their Kentucky facilities in a short video shown to employees, Bloomberg reports.
Subaru Corp. filed a recall of some 395,000 vehicles Thursday with Japan's transport ministry after it was revealed that the carmaker had allowed unauthorized workers to carry out final tests at two of its plants for over 30 years.
The Japanese carmaker has recalled all nine of its models. The models include the "86" sports car, manufactured by Subaru for Toyota Motor Corp.
KITA-KYUSHU--Robots can accurately mimic skilled factory workers' painstaking craftsmanship faster and in greater detail than ever before with new technology developed by a major industrial machinery company here.
If the technology is put into practical use, it could help robotization at "monozukuri" (conscientious manufacturing) sites in Japan where technical experts are in scarce supply.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) has failed to grasp the entire picture of melted fuel possibly accumulating inside the container vessel of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. The radiation levels inside the vessel are extremely high, to the extent a human could be killed in less than a minute, and even a robot designed to conduct a probe inside went down quickly. 
The revised Act on Employment Promotion of Persons with Disabilities went into effect last spring, but only 48.8 percent of companies have met the requirement to have disabled persons occupy 2 percent of their workforce.
Japan and the United States signed on Monday a pact to effectively remove legal protection over some U.S. military base workers, hoping the move will deter base-linked crimes in Okinawa where the bulk of U.S. military facilities in Japan are hosted. 
The operators of nuclear power plants in Japan are to start background checks on facility workers next year as part of terrorism prevention efforts.
A brand of handbags on sale for between 20,000 yen and 50,000 yen ($186 and $464) in downtown Tokyo has gained a following despite having never been offered at a discount.