Japanese Foreign Minister Hayashi Yoshimasa has urged China to fulfill its responsibility as a major power at a Group of Seven meeting in Germany.

The G7 foreign ministers exchanged views on China and the Indo-Pacific region on Thursday.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has called on Japan to improve the way that detainees are treated at immigration detention facilities.

The UN committee has been assessing the state of human rights in countries in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It issued its findings on Japan on Thursday.

Private researchers say Japan's economy probably expanded in the July-to-September quarter. But they say the growth was limited due to weak consumer spending.

Twelve think tanks estimate that GDP grew at an annualized rate of 0.7 percent to 2.4 percent in real terms in the three-month period. That would be the fourth consecutive quarter of increase.

People in Japan are eating less and less fish as sales of the traditional staple continue to decline. That's led the government and businesses to team up in a bid to reverse the trend. The Fisheries Agency has designated the third to the seventh of each month as "Fish Days."

So far, more than 600 companies and groups have thrown their weight behind the campaign.

Japan's health ministry says 6,686 new COVID-19 cases were reported in Tokyo on Thursday. That's an increase of 2,745 from the same day last week.

This is the 12th consecutive day on which the number of new cases has been higher than it was a week before.

Japan's Defense Ministry has estimated that the next mid-term defense program should cost around 48 trillion yen, or about 325 billion dollars, over a five-year period.

The government is working to revise three key defense documents, including the mid-term program, by the end of the year in order to drastically enhance Japan's defense capabilities.

People in Japan are leaving flowers at a temporary memorial in Tokyo for the 156 victims of the crowd crush in an alleyway in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

On Thursday, about 20 Korean and Japanese people visited the memorial, which is in Shinjuku Ward inside an office of the Federation of Korean Associations, Japan -- an organization of Korean people in Japan.

A groundbreaking ceremony has been held in Okinawa to mark the start of reconstruction of the main hall of Shuri Castle, which burned down three years ago.

The seven buildings at the World Heritage Site burned to the ground in a devastating predawn fire on October 31, 2019.

Japanese defense ministry officials say North Korea again fired what could have been a ballistic missile on Thursday evening.

The ministry is gathering information to determine if it had any impact on Japan.

Japan's government said it had already issued a strong protest and condemnation of North Korea through its embassy in Beijing. Prime Minister Kishida Fumio told reporters that North Korea's continuous launches over the past few days are unacceptable.

Kishida said, "North Korea has conducted repeated ballistic missile launches in recent days. This is an outrage and should never be tolerated. I have already instructed the relevant bodies to check whether there was any damage, to provide appropriate information to the public, and to analyze all that information."

Senior government officials of Japan, the United States and South Korea have been holding discussions on the telephone over North Korea's continuous missile launches.

The officials are Funakoshi Takehiro, who heads the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, the US Special Representative for North Korea, Sung Kim, and South Korea's Special Representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs, Kim Gunn.

The vice president of Japan's main ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Aso Taro, has met with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin in Seoul.

Aso and Park talked for about an hour over breakfast on Thursday. The talks follow Aso's meeting on the previous day with South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol.

Japan's defense minister says North Korea fired multiple missiles toward the Sea of Japan on Thursday morning.

Hamada Yasukazu told reporters that one of the missiles is believed to be an intermediate- or long-range ballistic missile. He said it had reached an altitude of about 2,000 kilometers and traveled roughly 750 kilometers, before falling into the Sea of Japan.

North Korea is believed to have launched multiple ballistic missiles headed in an easterly direction on Thursday morning. Japanese officials say one may have been an ICBM. They are trying to determine the latest details.

Japan's Defense Ministry says the missiles flew toward the Sea of Japan from around 7:40 a.m.