The success of the Meiji regime elite in placing Japan on the road to unprecedented rapid economic development is for all to see in the public history displayed within the port districts of Yokohama, Kobe and Nagasaki. Silence marks the history of how important these port-rail-communications developments were to the restoration of Japan's own sovereignty and the simultaneous stripping away of others. This work explores the state and left-unstated reasoning behind Meiji Japan's elevation to become the first non-western power utilising the authors photography of the public history of Japanese ports and their indispensable rail and communications connections.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on love, marriage and family life. Employing both social science and cultural studies perspectives, this article discusses romantic and familial relationships and their respective depictions in four Japanese romantic dramas (ren'ai dorama) produced under pandemic conditions. It touches upon the COVID-19 pandemic and related policies in Japan, elaborates on conditions of TV production during the pandemic, and asks: How have TV series addressed love, dating and (marital) relationships during the pandemic? How did the pandemic and concomitant policies impact depictions of these topics? Finally, what do these dramas reveal about the state of domestic gender relations and gender equality in the context of changing working conditions and stay-at-home policies implemented during the pandemic? The article identifies a trend consistent with ‘re-traditionalization’ on the one hand, and depictions of diverse, unconventional relational practices that are critical of the marital institution on the other. While the dramas touch on the impact of the pandemic on women's livelihoods and gender equality, more serious consequences remain unexplored.

This article provides a concise overview of the well-organized, nationwide student movement which emerged in Japan in the immediate aftermath of World War II; its participation in the escalating political struggles of the 1950s, including an abortive attempt at a communist revolution from 1950 to 1952, anti-military base protests climaxing in the Sunagawa struggle from 1955 to 1957, and the massive Anpo protests against the US-Japan Security Treaty from 1959 to 1960; its collapse into warring “sects” in the 1960s; its revival in the form of the radically de-centralized, anti-hierarchical zenkyōtō movement of the late 1960s; and a final turn to violent extremism and a resulting delegitimization of student activism in the early 1970s. Among other observations, this article elucidates how the movement grew so large and so powerful so quickly, how it differed from student movements in other nations, connections between the Japanese student movement and similar movements in the western world, and the movement's broader social and political context both in reference to other Japanese social movements and the ongoing global Cold War.