Although the government has a Minister in Charge of Support for Women's Empowerment and Child-Rearing, the reality is that having a baby is just as difficult now as it always was for aspiring career-minded mothers.

As technology automates and sweeps over our lives, one sector in particular that has been hard hit and many have predicted will disappear all together is the printing industry - a sector worth about JPY1.36trn in Japan.

Japan took a step closer to allowing genetically edited plants and animals into our food chain. An advisory panel to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, decided that gene-edited foods are safe for the public to eat.

The Japan Center for Economic Research, a Tokyo-based think tank related to the Nikkei newspaper, released an update report stating the cost of cleaning up the Fukushima Daiichi power plant has now risen to around JPY81trn.