Russian President Vladimir Putin has extended his Christmas and New Year's greetings to U.S. President Donald Trump and other world leaders, but not to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

The year-end balance of bank notes in circulation in Japan is estimated at 120,606 billion yen, falling for the third straight year amid the rise of cashless payments, according to Bank of Japan data released Tuesday.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday criticized Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, apparently mentioning her remarks from November regarding a possible Taiwan contingency.

A former police official apologized Tuesday over the December 2000 murder of a family of four in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward as the perpetrator in the crime has not been captured yet.

Japanese soccer legend Kazuyoshi Miura, 58, will join Fukushima United in the third division of the Japan Professional Football League, or J. League, the club said Tuesday.

Former Japanese Communist Party leader Tetsuzo Fuwa died of acute cardiac failure at a Tokyo hospital on Tuesday. He was 95.

A Japanese nonprofit organization is calling for consumers to choose emergency portable toilets that meet its quality standards.

The benchmark Nikkei 225 stock average closed above 50,000 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Tuesday, the final market day of 2025, marking its highest year-end finish.

Yomeishu Seizo Co. has granted U.S. investment fund KKR preferential negotiation rights to take the company private, officials at the Japanese herbal health tonic maker said Tuesday.

A Japanese federation of labor unions at small and midsize machinery and metal makers will highlight the plight of workers in next spring's "shunto" annual wage negotiations with the management, its leader, Katahiro Yasukochi, has said.

A 26-year-old Japanese tourist has died in the Island of Hawaii after jumping from a cliff into the ocean in the southern part of the island, according to local police.

Sumitomo Life Insurance Co. aims to double membership of its flagship health-promotion insurance program, Vitality, to 5 million over the next five years, banking on a new related asset-building product to drive this growth, President Yukinori Takada said in a recent interview.

Tokyo police have arrested a man on suspicion of stabbing a woman in the Takadanobaba district of the Japanese capital's Shinjuku Ward on Monday, investigative sources said Tuesday.

The brutal murder of a family of four in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward remains unresolved a quarter century after the crime, despite many clues left at the scene, such as fingerprints and bloodstains, and police continue their desperate search for a person responsible for the fatal assault case.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi moved into the official residence of the prime minister from the dormitory for members of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of parliament, on Monday.

Japanese and U.S. officials are working to select which projects in the United States will receive 550 billion dollars in investments and loans from Japan as part of a trade agreement that Tokyo and Washington struck in summer 2025.

A woman was stabbed multiple times in the upper body on a Tokyo street around noon Monday and was taken to a hospital while remaining conscious, according to investigative sources.

Japan's Antarctic research vessel Shirase carved its way through sea ice and reached a fast ice berthing point about 1,700 meters off Japan's Showa Station at 12:44 p.m. on Saturday.

A Bank of Japan policymaker called for raising interest rates "with intervals of a few months" at the central bank's latest policy-setting meeting this month, according to a summary of opinions at the meeting released on Monday.

A 5-year-old boy died after becoming trapped in an escalator at a ski resort in Otaru in the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido, according to local police.