Prime Minister Shinzo Abe meets the King of JordanAbdullah II, and commits to 14.7 billion yen of assistance consisting of 12 billion in yen loans and 2.7 billion in contributions to international organizations providing medical assistance and supplies to refugee camps.[5]
January 20 – ISIL threatens to kill two Japanese citizens unless it receives a ransom of $200 million.[7]
January 24 – Japanese government states that it is seeking to verify a video that claims the killing of Japanese hostage Haruna Yukawa by ISIL militants.[8]
February 23 – Agricultural Minister Koya Nishikawa resigns over a fundraising scandal and is succeeded by Yoshimasa Hayashi, whom Nishikawa had replaced as agriculture minister in September 2014.[13]
February 26
The Supreme Court endorses punishment issued by Kaiyukan, an aquarium in Osaka, including suspensions, against two male managers for sexual harassment, overturning the ruling by Osaka High Court that said the penalties were too heavy, making this the first decision over such issues by the Japanese Supreme Court.[14]
March 3 – Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft and a philanthropist, announces that he has discovered the Japanese battleship Musashi, more than 70 years after it was sunk by the United States Navy, in the Sibuyan Sea, of the Philippines.[17]
March 10
The Supreme Court rejects prosecutors' claims that a 41-year-old man from Osaka Prefecture evaded 570 million yen in taxes by failing to declare income from betting on horse races, confirming that money lost betting on horses can, for tax purposes, be considered expenses deductible from winnings.[18]
FamilyMart and UNY Group Holdings, the holding company of Circle K Sunkus, reach an agreement to merge in September 2016, forming the second biggest convenience store operator by sales in Japan under a single brand name.[19]
March 12 – A 46-year-old man, arrested in Hawaii in 2014 for a murder case which occurred in 2007, admits after entering a guilty plea at a court in San Diego that he killed his Japanese wife and left her body in the Anza-Borrego Desert in California.[21]
March 14–18 – Sendai hosts the third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, resulting in the Sendai Framework, an agreement aiming for "the substantial reduction of disaster risk and losses in lives, livelihoods and health and in the economic, physical, social, cultural and environmental assets of persons, businesses, communities and countries."[22]
March 14 – Hokuriku Shinkansen starts its service between Nagano and Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture, cutting travel time between Tokyo and Kanazawa by about eighty minutes to as little as two hours and twenty-eight minutes.[23]
The South Korean government lifts the departure ban on a former chief of the Sankei Shimbun's Seoul bureau, who had been barred from leaving the country for eight months following his indictment in October 2014 for defamation of South Korean President Park Geun-hye.[31] The charges were due to an article, posted on a Sankei website, that referred to a rumor in a South Korean publication that Park was seeing a man on the day of the Sewol ferry disaster in April 2014.[32][33]
April 21
At Yamanashi Test Track, a seven car maglev train set a new land speed record for rail vehicles at 603 km/h. It is the only rail vehicle ever surpassed 600 km/h speed mark
A drone which has trace levels of radioactive cesium is discovered on the roof of the Prime Minister's Official Residence, while Prime Minister Abe has been in Jakarta to attend the 60th anniversary of the Bandung Conference of 1955.[38] Two days later, a 40-year-old man turns himself in to Fukui prefectural police, claiming that he landed the drone in protest against the Japanese government's nuclear energy policy.[39]
May
May 17 – A dormitory apartment fire in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture, according to Fire and Disaster Management Agency official confirmed report, 11 peoples lost to lives, with 17 are injures.[40]
May 30 – An abnormally intense magnitude 7.8 earthquake occurs in the Bonin Islands, with shaking observed throughout the territory. Official reports confirm 13 injuries.[42]
June
June 30 – A passenger commits suicide by setting himself on fire while riding the Tokaido Shinkansen to Odawara, Kanagawa, resulting in two fatalities.ja:東海道新幹線火災事件
July
July 26 – A Piper PA-46 crashes into a residential area in Chofu, Tokyo, starting a fire that ends with three deaths.[43]
September 11 – A heavy torrential rain along the entire length of the Kinu River leads to a levee collapse and flash flooding in Jōsō, Ibaraki. Official reports confirm 8 fatalities.[45]
Yokozuna Grand Champion Hakuhō Shō wins his 33rd career championship with two days to spare at the New Year Grand Sumo Tournament in Ryogoku Kokugikan, surpassing the record of 32 titles he shared with sumo legend Taiho Koki, who made the long-lasting record in 1971.[46]
February 3 – The Japan Football Association(JFA) fires Javier Aguirre as the manager of the Japan national football team, as Aguirre has been involved in an ongoing match-fixing investigation over the Real Zaragoza's 2–1 win against Levante UD on the final day of the 2010–11 La Liga, when Aguirre was the head coach of Zaragoza.[48]
March 28 – Yoshihide Kiryu runs the men's 100 meters in 9.87 seconds to win the men's invitational sprint at the Texas Relays, marking the fastest ever electronically recorded performance by an Asian sprinter under any conditions.[54]
April 4 – Mieko Nagaoka becomes the first 100-year-old in the world to complete a 1,500-meter freestyle swim in a time of just over 1 hour and 15 minutes, using the backstroke for the entire duration in a 25-meter pool.[55]
Satoru Iwata, a Japanese businessman, video game programmer and designer, and the 4th President of Nintendo, who died of bile duct cancer at the age of 55.
March 31 – Cocoa Fujiwara, manga artist and illustrator (b. 1983)
April
April 1 – Misao Okawa, a supercentenarian, the verified oldest Japanese person ever, the oldest person ever born in Asia, and the fifth oldest verified person ever recorded (b. 1898)
April 15 – Kinya Aikawa, actor, TV presenter, and voice actor (b. 1934)
May
May 28 – Masayuki Imai, playwright and actor (b. 1961)
May 29 – Naomi Miyake, cognitive scientist (b. 1948)
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