From subsea cables to science, communities and the Asian Games.
Fifteen main reports, News Briefs, Today’s Art Choice featuring Sakai Hōitsu, plus six selected articles from the September 26 edition.
NEC Takes on Meta’s Petal: The Transatlantic Cable Designed for the Petabit Era
Meta’s Petal is planned as a 7,000-km U.S.-France subsea cable using two-core fiber, with NEC responsible for overall design and construction and Sumitomo Electric supplying the fiber.
Read the report →Monday, September 28, 2026
Four to Read Today
Economy · science · communities · art
Five More Stories in Brief
September PMI, immune-cell research, Noto reconstruction housing, the Japan Open and a Renoir exhibition in concise form.
Read News Briefs →Business & Economy
Monday, September 28, 2026NEC Takes on Meta’s Petal: The Transatlantic Cable Designed for the Petabit Era
Meta’s Petal is planned as a 7,000-km U.S.-France subsea cable using two-core fiber, with NEC responsible for overall design and construction and Sumitomo Electric supplying the fiber.
Japan’s FSA Puts AI Data-Center Finance Under Closer Watch as Banks and Insurers Expand Exposure
Japan’s Financial Services Agency has made data-center project finance an explicit supervisory focus as banks and life insurers increase exposure to the capital-intensive AI infrastructure buildout.
Japanese Food Makers Expand U.S. Production as Growth Shifts Beyond a Shrinking Home Market
Kikkoman, Nissin Foods and House Foods are deepening U.S. production as Japan’s population declines and North America becomes a larger source of long-term food-industry growth.
Science & Technology
Monday, September 28, 2026Kyoto-Led Team Maps the Gene Switches Behind Human Skeletal Evolution
A Kyoto University-led international team functionally tested more than 561,000 human-derived regulatory substitutions and uncovered coordinated changes in cartilage-related extracellular matrix pathways.
Japanese Team Maps the Full Catalytic Cycle of a Molybdenum Route to Ammonia
Researchers from the University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Kyoto Institute of Technology and Daido University have elucidated the full catalytic mechanism of a molybdenum system that converts nitrogen to ammonia using samarium diiodide and water.
MA-5 Improves Mitochondrial Function Across Multiple ALS Models
A Tohoku University-led team found that MA-5 improved ATP production, mitochondrial function and related disease phenotypes in ALS fruit flies, patient fibroblasts and iPSC-derived motor neurons.
Communities
Monday, September 28, 2026Flooded Again: Kanto’s Repeated Rains Turn Recovery Into a Test of Resilience
Barely five weeks after the August 2026 Chiba Heavy Rain, Typhoon No. 25 again brought deadly landslides, flooding, levee failures and transport damage across Kanto, testing how communities recover when the next disaster arrives before the last one is finished.
Akita Turns ‘Nobody Knows Us’ Into a Tourism Strategy—and Visitors Respond
Akita Prefecture’s self-aware ‘Still Unnoticed’ tourism campaign paired humor with accommodation incentives and local experiences. June overnight stays rose 34.4% from a year earlier, the strongest prefectural growth rate in Japan.
Japan Tightens Furusato Nozei Gift Rules: Local Value Must Now Be Proven
From October 2026, municipalities and suppliers must more rigorously document that qualifying processed return gifts derive more than half their value from local production, with new disclosure and procurement-price requirements.
Sports
Monday, September 28, 2026
Japan Beats China 3–2 for First Asian Games Men’s Team Table Tennis Gold in 60 Years
Japan defeated China 3–2 at Sky Hall Toyota, winning its first Asian Games men’s team table tennis title since Bangkok 1966 and ending China’s eight-title, 32-year run dating to Hiroshima 1994.
Shin Ohashi Breaks the 2:05 Barrier With a 200m Breaststroke World Record at 17
Japan’s Shin Ohashi swam 2:04.83 in the Asian Games men’s 200m breaststroke, cutting 0.65 seconds from Qin Haiyang’s world record and becoming the first man under 2:05.
Japan’s 15-Year-Old Park Champions Show the Depth of Its Skateboarding Pipeline
Mizuho Hasegawa and Izuru Nagahara, both 15, won the women’s and men’s park titles at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, extending Japan’s remarkable run of teenage elite skateboarders.
Culture
Monday, September 28, 2026
Yamaga Seika Wove Rockets and Tokyo Tower Into Kyoto Textile Art
Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art is staging the first Yamaga Seika retrospective in 40 years, tracing how the textile pioneer turned handwoven brocade into a medium for everything from festival hangings to locomotives, rockets and Tokyo Tower.
Japan’s Autumn Art Season Is Moving Beyond the Tokyo Museum Circuit
From Maebashi’s shopping streets to a former school in Gero and the satoyama of Echigo-Tsumari, autumn 2026 shows how regional festivals are changing where contemporary art is encountered in Japan.
Friday Night Plans Is Rebuilding Her Sound Beyond the R&B Identity That Made Her Known
With Blue Hour, Masumi’s Friday Night Plans moves from sleek R&B toward acoustic guitar, processed vocals, improvisation and ambient space, extending a long-running effort to treat the act as a creative project rather than a fixed pop persona.
Today’s Art Choice
Today’s Art Choice: Sakai Hōitsu — Autumn, Reduced to a Persimmon Tree
Sakai Hōitsu’s 1816 Persimmon Tree reduces late autumn to one aging tree, sparse grasses and a few ripe fruit.
Read the essay →Six Selected From the September 26 Edition
Read in their original publication context
Kanematsu Expands Into Engineering Software With ¥50.4 Billion IDAJ Acquisition
Kanematsu Electronics plans to complete the acquisition on October 1, adding specialist simulation and engineering software capabilities for manufacturing customers.
SBI Agrees to Acquire Livedoor for ¥7.5 Billion
The deal would give SBI a broader media and blog audience for customer acquisition, while sharpening questions about keeping editorial activity separate from financial-product promotion.
JFE’s India Electrical-Steel Venture Secures $285 Million Financing
JBIC and three Japanese banks are backing equipment investment in Karnataka aimed at expanding local production of high-grade grain-oriented electrical steel for transformers.
Science Tokyo and MIT Begin Three-Year Research and Entrepreneurship Partnership
The collaboration focuses on energy, biomedical engineering and microelectronics, pairing research exchanges with entrepreneurship education and grants of up to $30,000 per project.
Aiko Sugihara Wins Japan’s First Asian Games Women’s All-Around Gold
Sugihara scored 55.599 to take the title on home soil, with Misa Nishiyama adding bronze as Japan converted years of comeback work into a landmark team result.
Tokyo Exhibition Traces the Global History of Silver Through Iwami Ginzan
The Ancient Orient Museum exhibition follows silver from ancient objects to early-modern mining and trade, ahead of commemorative programs marking Iwami Ginzan’s World Heritage anniversary.
Images for today’s main reports and art feature are AI-generated editorial illustrations inspired by the Rinpa sensibility of Sakai Hōitsu. They are not documentary photographs or reproductions of Hōitsu’s works. The six carryovers use their September 26 edition images.
