Message from the managing editor

Dear readers, While only half a year has passed since our previous issue, the pace of changes in Japan and in the world makes it feel like much longer. The SARS-CoV2 pandemic has been declared “over” in many countries, even as infection and death rates have reached new heights in Japan and elsewhere; meanwhile, monkey pox is the newest virus to invade the public discourse. The ongoing war in the Ukraine continues to impact lives and livelihoods for many in Europe and beyond. And as if to add exclamation points to the year 2022, former prime minister Abe Shinzo was assassinated and Queen Elizabeth II passed away (with both funerals being held in September, just before this issue was published). In Japan, Abe’s “state funeral” was greeted with disapproval by over half of the public as well as protests, and the continuing fallout from the revelations of lawmaker’s connections to certain religious organizations may harbor future changes in state-society relations. In all these ways, 2022 has certainly been different than the previous “pandemic years,” though no less eventful. Nonetheless, at CJ we continue to try and bring you the latest research and commentaries on Japan, and this issue maintains this commitment. Volume 34 Issue 2 brings together a Special Section on “Continuity and Change 10 Years after 3.11: Processes and Dynamics in State-Society Relations,” an invited commentary, and our book review section. The Special Section features an Introduction by the guest editors Anna Wiemann, Florentine Koppenborg, and Tobias Weiss that situates the 3.11 disaster within the broader dynamics of statesociety relations over the ten years since the disaster. The three papers in this Special Section analyze the post-3.11 developments in social movements (Loschke), protest participation (Satoh), and disaster memorial museums (Gerster and Maly), and bring important longitudinal and comparative perspective to the ongoing effects of the disaster on Japanese society – and indeed, the dynamics they analyze prove especially relevant given the ways that Abe’s recent assassination has become a touchstone for both protest and memorialization. In our invited commentary section, Norio Okada from Kwansei Gakuin University provides a fascinating reflection on his 30 years of fieldwork in so-called “depopulated areas,” with a focus on Chizu Town in Tottori Prefecture, and challenges us to shift our attention from the statistical framings of “rural decline” to the actual “small, lively communities” that may hold the secret to revitalizing rural communities across Japan. Rounding out the issue, our book review section covers English and German language publications in the fields of education, family, history, religious studies, and black studies. CONTEMPORARY JAPAN 2022, VOL. 34, NO. 2, 125–126 https://doi.org/10.1080/18692729.2022.2133576