Can Crop Waste Hold Water in Fukaya’s Fields?
August 31 Edition · Business & Work
A carrot field in Saitama will test a superabsorbent polymer made from crop residues against heat and dry conditions. The harvest is expected in late November. Until then, the project is a question—not a result.
Read the full report →Four Stories to Start With
Drought technology, yen intervention, US Open, Merian
Today’s 16
15 new reports + today’s art choice
Business & Work
Business & Work · 01–03Can Crop Waste Hold Water in Fukaya’s Fields?
A carrot field in Saitama will test a superabsorbent polymer made from crop residues against heat and dry conditions. The harvest is expected in late November. Until then, the project is a question—not a result.
A Railway Group Takes On Farm Succession in Hanamaki
JR East’s new agricultural subsidiary has acquired a local 50-hectare producer. The owner and president change; the farm’s name, employees and place in the community remain. Now the promise has to survive planting seasons, harvests and the economics of rice.
Japan Put ¥15.4 Trillion Behind the Yen
Japan has disclosed the largest monthly foreign-exchange intervention total in its records: ¥15.3993 trillion from July 30 through August 26. The headline number is firm. The complete trade log—every date, amount and currency pair—is not.
Universities & Research
Universities & Research · 04–06
One Interaction. Two Reputations. More Cooperation.
Standard models judge the person who chooses to help. A new study also judges the person receiving that help. The extra reputation update aligns private opinions and stabilizes cooperation in simulations—but the same mechanism may turn mistreatment into contagious exclusion.
A Half-Millimeter Pest Turns Orange For Winter
Long nights make female two-spotted spider mites stop reproducing and change from yellow-green to vivid orange. Researchers at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and Obihiro University have identified TuPLAT10 as one protein connecting the two changes. The evidence points to a switch that redirects lipids from eggs to pigment—but the pathway is not yet fully mapped.
The Stomach Changed. Then the Intestine Rebuilt Itself.
Three-dimensional imaging in male mice shows that the intestine’s response to sleeve gastrectomy is local rather than uniform. Duodenal villi became shorter, GLP-1-producing L cells increased in the ileum, and GIP-producing K cells declined in the duodenum even as GIP secretion was maintained.
Life & Society
Life & Society · 07–09
Japan Killed 14,618 Bears. The Safety Question Is Still Open.
Fiscal 2025 brought records on both sides of Japan’s bear crisis: 216 incidents, 238 victims, 13 deaths and 14,618 bears killed in permitted capture operations. The durable answer will depend on whether population control is joined to zoning, attractant removal, habitat management, monitoring and trained local response.
3,000 Fire Ant Workers. A Queen and Winged Ants. Now Comes the Search.
More than 3,000 red imported fire-ant workers, about 100 winged ants, a queen and extensive brood were found at Mizushima Port in Okayama. Another large group had been destroyed at the same terminal five weeks earlier. Preserving Japan’s record of no confirmed establishment now rests on eradication and patient follow-up.
Eight Regions. 1,084 Job Outcomes. Retention Is the Test.
Japan has selected locally designed employment projects from Kushiro to Amami Ōshima. Together they cover 18 municipalities and set a three-fiscal-year target of 1,084 employment outcomes. The policy is less a national job-creation formula than eight attempts to repair different mismatches between employers and workers.
Sports
Sports · 10–12Sakamoto Beats Nishikori. A Main Draw Begins. A Major Career Ends.
Rei Sakamoto defeated Kei Nishikori 6-4, 7-6(3) in the final round of US Open qualifying. The 20-year-old earned his first place in the New York main draw; the retiring 36-year-old completed his last Grand Slam match at the tournament where he reached the 2014 final.
Five Wins in Three Days. Japan Advances. The Harder Test Awaits.
Japan swept five opponents in Tainan, scoring 54 runs and allowing two after rain compressed the group into three playing days and shortened every game to five innings. The reward is a place in the six-team 2027 Women’s Baseball World Cup Finals in Rockford, Illinois.
A Rule Partly Reversed. A Court Petition Settled. The Categories Remain.
Japan Rugby League One has widened transitional protection for existing and grandfathered players under its 2026–27 registration system. The August 27 settlement ended a provisional-injunction petition, but it did not erase the A-1/A-2 structure or its match-day limits.
Music & Culture
Music & Culture · 13–15
The Work Was Built into Japan. Now Tada Minami Returns to the Museum.
The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo has opened the first major posthumous survey of Tada Minami. About 70 works and a documentary archive reveal an artist who made light behave like material—and whose hotel ceilings, civic walls and public sculptures challenge the very idea of a portable retrospective.
Floats After Dark. Drums Answer Drums. Towada Takes the Street.
Towada City’s 2026 autumn festival will occupy two broad avenues from September 4 through 6. Daytime float processions, nagashi dancing and mikoshi lead into a Saturday programme built around a Towada-bayashi competition and an illuminated night procession. The official wording also corrects two easy misconceptions: no live-horse show is advertised, and the so-called “fighting drums” are a musical exchange.
One Definition. Twenty-One Kitchens. A New Tai-meshi Takes Shape.
Seven restaurants have joined Ehime’s Tōyo Western-style grilled tai-meshi project, bringing the official network to 21. They do not share a master recipe. They share three boundaries—Ehime red sea bream grilled and kept visibly intact; rice; and a Western-style treatment that preserves the fish’s flavor—then make dishes ranging from risotto to paella and tomato-egg rice porridge.
16. Today’s Art Choice
Maria Sibylla Merian · Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium
When Metamorphosis Became a Way of Seeing
Maria Sibylla Merian’s 1705 Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium joined botanical painting and insect observation in a single field of view. Today’s choice is plate 7: West Indian cherry, two butterflies, a caterpillar and a pupa arranged as one image of time.
This editorial image was inspired by plate 7 of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705). The reference work is made available by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
Read the art feature →Six Picks from the August 30 Edition
Corporate governance, monetary policy, environment, disaster recovery, small business, art
Who Changed Hamaoka’s Decommissioning Records?
Copies of contractor reports were rewritten before Chubu Electric used them to report work and support a cost claim for dismantling Hamaoka Units 1 and 2. At least 14 work items are implicated. The people responsible, the amount of money affected and the reach into fiscal 2025 have not been disclosed.
Move Before Inflation Forces the BOJ’s Hand
Deputy Governor Ryozo Himino’s argument for timely rate increases is not a promise about the next meeting. It is a warning about the cost of waiting until inflation accelerates—and about the long, uneven journey from a policy decision to a household budget.
When an Abandoned Field Becomes Habitat—and When It Becomes a Loss
A field left unfarmed can replace a vanished marsh, or it can erase the open water and bare ground that wildlife had come to depend on. Surveys at 199 sites across Japan, combined with evidence from four continents, reveal why both stories are true—and why neither “rewild everything” nor “restore every field” is a defensible national policy.
The Warning Lifted. The Roads Did Not.
Himi and Hakui recorded the heaviest 24-hour rainfall in their observation histories. Rescue calls were answered, but landslides, fallen trees, breached levees and failed utilities left communities cut off. The downgrade from a Level 5 emergency was not the end of the disaster. It was the start of finding out what the rain had done.
1,176 Plans to Buy Back Scarce Working Time
Japan selected 1,176 businesses as grant candidates in the sixth round of its SME labor-saving investment program. Their proposals range from noodle lines and cargo-unloading robots to laser cutters and hotel-management systems. The aim is not simply to remove workers from payrolls, but to move people away from repetitive, dangerous or capacity-limiting tasks.
Yayoi Kusama Turned Repetition into a Universe
The dots were never merely decoration. Across painting, sculpture, performance, fiction and mirrored rooms, Kusama used repetition to make the self both unmistakable and unstable. She died at 97 after a life that began in Matsumoto, transformed New York’s avant-garde and continued at the easel into her final days.
