Surveys for the Yamba Dam began in 1952. In September 2009, after a change of government, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Maehara Seiji said that work on the main structure would be halted.
On December 22, 2011, a meeting of the ministry’s political leaders decided to continue the project. The dam was completed in March 2020 and began operating in April 2020, 68 years after the surveys began.
The decision to stop was itself reversed. The project went on to completion.
In May 2004, Japan passed the Act on Criminal Trials with the Participation of Lay Judges, the saiban’in system. The act came into force on May 21, 2009.
At an advisory meeting in 2004, a court official described the preparation. The courts had already held mogi saiban, mock trials, to see what trials with lay judges would actually be like. The aim was a smooth start for a system that would take effect within five years. From the autumn of 2008, lists of candidates for lay judges were drawn up.
In 2001, Japan amended its Radio Act so that radio-use fees could pay for the frequency changes needed to move television to digital. The plan was to complete the move to digital terrestrial broadcasting by July 24, 2011.
At noon on July 24, 2011, analog terrestrial broadcasting ended everywhere except Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima. In those three prefectures, the deadline was extended to March 31, 2012.
The director Ozu Yasujirō wrote Banshun (Late Spring), Bakushū (Early Summer) and Tōkyō monogatari (Tokyo Story) with the screenwriter Noda Kōgo at the Chigasakikan, the inn in Chigasaki where Ozu regularly stayed.
The two also worked at a mountain lodge in Tateshina. In the three or four months they spent developing the idea, writing the script and planning the shoot, one hundred large bottles of sake piled up at the lodge’s entrance.
On June 26, 1962, trial runs began on the Kamonomiya model line of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen. The section was about 30 kilometers long. It was built so that prototype trains and new equipment could be tested in real conditions before the whole line was finished.
On March 30, 1963, a test train reached 256 kilometers per hour on the model line. In February 1964, the model line became part of the Tōkaidō Shinkansen.
Before the space probe Hayabusa2 first touched down on the asteroid Ryugu, JAXA ran a series of touchdown rehearsals. In one, on October 14 and 15, 2018, the probe descended to about 22.3 meters above the surface to check the accuracy of its navigation and guidance. This test had been planned for an earlier rehearsal, but a sensor failed to switch modes.
In the next rehearsal, from October 23 to 25, the probe fed its laser range measurements back into its control. The first touchdown was postponed to January 2019 or later.
In 1951, Toyota began an activity in which employees submit creative ideas for improvement. Today it is called the sōi kufū teian seido, the creative idea suggestion system. In March 1953, Toyota adopted the company slogan Yoi shina, yoi kangae, good products, good ideas.
The cumulative number of suggestions passed one million in 1974, ten million in 1984 and forty million in 2011.
On July 30, 1978, Okinawa switched from right-hand to left-hand traffic, on a date set by a cabinet decision of June 24, 1975. Roads were closed from 10 p.m. on July 29 for eight hours. By 6 a.m. on July 30, the rule had become “cars on the left, people on the right.”
Signs and road markings on 4,974 kilometers of public roads had to be changed. Schools and kindergartens drilled the new rule, and television and radio ran programs on it. Most buses were replaced with new right-hand-drive buses. The day is remembered as Nana-san-maru, seven-three-zero.
In the folklorist Miyamoto Tsuneichi’s Wasurerareta Nihonjin (The Forgotten Japanese), the chapter “In Tsushima” describes a village meeting, the yoriai. The chapter draws on his experience during a survey of the island in 1950.
“When a village decides something,” he wrote, “everyone talks for as many days as it takes, until everyone is satisfied.” The book collects the series “Toshiyoritachi,” published in the magazine Minwa from 1958 to 1960, and other essays.
Dandori (段取り): the order and steps for doing something, and the preparation for it.
Dandori hachibu (段取り八分): preparation is eighty percent. Good preparation is eighty percent of success.