Japan | featured news

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday that U.S. and Japanese officials have agreed to put a second missile defense system in Japan... While officials insisted the radar system would not be aimed at China, the decision was sure to raise the ire of Beijing.

Some Japanese firms have temporarily shut factories and shops in China after angry protests over a territorial dispute, with Chinese state media warning on Monday that Japan could suffer another "lost decade" if trade ties sour.

Thousands of Chinese besieged the Japanese embassy in Beijing on Saturday, hurling rocks, eggs and bottles. Protests spread to other cities in a dispute over a group of remote islands.

A storm packing 170 mph winds was bearing down on the southern end of Japan's Okinawa Island, where locals and U.S. military personnel stationed at several bases were quickly stocking up and battening down.

Six Chinese maritime surveillance ships entered waters around a group of islands at the center of a heated territorial dispute between Tokyo and Beijing, ignoring warnings from the Japanese authorities.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday she believed Japan and South Korea were ready to tone down a row over a disputed island chain that has set two close U.S. allies at odds amid heightened regional tensions with China.

China and its neighbors in Southeast Asia must move determinedly to draw up a code of conduct to help resolve disputes in the South China Sea, and should refrain from threats and coercion that have sent tension skyrocketing, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday.

A Tokyo court on Friday dismissed Apple Inc.'s (AAPL) claim that Samsung had infringed on its patent - the latest ruling in the global legal battle between the two technology titans over smartphones.

Vast oil reserves, trillion-dollar trade routes, fervent nationalist sentiments, competing territorial claims and bitter histories – the waters off the east coast of China are a sea of money and a sea of trouble.

European private-equity firm Permira said it would buy Japanese sushi chain Akindo Sushiro for around $1 billion, making a bet that the popular restaurant brand can expand beyond Japan.