A widely ridiculed Japanese government idea to lure Tokyo women into marrying men in rural areas by offering cash payouts and train tickets to matchmaking events has been scrapped, officials said ...

Violet Pacileo left her job in finance in Tokyo to open a CrossFit gym in rural Japan. She discovered moving to the countryside didn't necessarily mean a slower pace of life, she said. She said that ...

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 ...

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 ...