Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Coline Aguirre bought a traditional house in the Japanese countryside when she was 24. She left France and moved to Japan alone to ...

Families in the U.S. and around the world are having fewer children as people make profoundly different decisions about their lives. NPR's series Population Shift: How Smaller Families Are Changing ...

TOKYO (AP) — Sumo is more than a sport in Japan. It’s a sacred tradition, a 1,500-year-old spectacle steeped in Shinto ritual and ceremony. But at its heart lies a long-standing taboo: women are still ...

Members of a university kanto club perform in Akita Prefecture, Japan. Tradition and religion dictate that only men are allowed to be sashite or pole carriers. Anthony Kuhn is NPR's correspondent ...