Japan has confirmed the existence of secret Cold War-era pacts with the US that allowed nuclear-armed warships to enter Japanese ports, violating Tokyo’s postwar principles.

While declassified U.S. documents have already confirmed such 1960s agreements, Tuesday’s revelation broke with decades of official denials.

The investigation by a government-mandated panel is part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s campaign to rein in the power of bureaucrats and make his government, which was elected to power last year, more open than that of the long-ruling conservatives, who repeatedly denied the existence of such pacts.

“It’s regrettable that such facts were not disclosed to the public for such a long time, even after the end of the Cold War era,” Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told a news conference, adding that the investigation was meant to restore public trust in Japan’s diplomacy.

The panel examined documents surrounding four pacts, including Tokyo’s tacit permission that U.S. nuclear-armed warships could make calls at Japanese ports – a violation of Japan’s so-called three non-nuclear principles not to make, own or allow the entry of atomic weapons.

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The world’s first pterosaur tracks from Japan suggest that pterodactyls coexisted with birds 127 million years ago.

For the latest study, accepted for publication in the journal Cretaceous Research, Lee and his colleagues focused on the pterosaur tracks. The scientists identified a total of 64 imprints made by five to six individuals that “show a clear quadrupedal gait pattern” with feet bearing curved “hook-like sharp” claws.

“The high density of the tracks suggest gregarious behavior, but the random orientation of the trackways does not show that they were moving in the same direction as a herd,” Lee said.

He and his team instead think the pterosaurs and birds randomly gathered to feed. The eating marks consist of “small round depressions on the slab,” possibly where the animals repeatedly pecked away for food.

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Unit 731, the Imperial Japanese Army’s notorious medical research team, carried out secret Josef Mengele-style experiments on human test subjects. Now some remains from the unit are prompting a reopened investigation into what crimes occurred.

The experiments included hanging people upside down until they choked, burying them alive, injecting air into their veins and placing them in high-pressure chambers.

Now new detail about their victims’ suffering could be revealed after the authorities in Tokyo announced plans to open an investigation into human bones thought to have come from the unit.

A new search is also due to be carried out for mass graves that may contain more victims of human experiments.

The bones are thought to be from up to 100 people and were discovered in a mass grave in 1989 during construction work.

They bore the marks of saws and some of the skulls had drill holes and portions of the bone cut out. But the issue is so controversial in Japan that they have since been stored in a repository.

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331 broken pieces belong to 81 ancient bronze mirrors have been unearthed from a stone chamber in Sakurai, Japan.

The pieces, which belonged to 13 different kinds of mirrors, were the largest number to be excavated as burial items from an ancient tomb in the nation. The tomb dates to between the late third century and early fourth century.

Some of the pieces had been made in the same mold as Sankakubuchi Shinjukyo mirrors, which are engraved with Seishi Gannen (in the Japanese reading), a period name of Wei-dynasty China, meaning the first year of the Seishi era, or 240.

Himiko, a female ruler of the Yamatai-koku kingdom, is said to have received 100 mirrors from the Wei dynasty in that year.

The Kashihara Archeological Institute in Nara Prefecture believes the discovery may help directly link the Yamataikoku kingdom with the Yamato dynasty, in the present-day Kinki region, that was later to be known as the Imperial Court.

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A makeup kit containing a pair of scissors, tweezers, a pot and a mirror has been discovered in a tomb in Nishiwaki, Japan.

“It’s very, very rare to discover ancient makeup implements,” Shiro Yamashita, the museum’s head of public relations said Thursday by phone.

The discovery is particularly precious because “few (historical) materials that tell something about the life of women living outside ancient capitals remain,” Yamashita said.

The makeup kit was found inside the tomb together with other belongings of the woman, whose social status was presumably high.

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