In 1967, 1968, and 1969, Japan was wracked by student uprisings that ultimately forced the closure of university campuses nationwide. Japan's student uprisings more or less coincided with the so-called “Global Revolutions of 1968” raging around the world, including (among many others) civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protests in the United States, the Cultural Revolution in China, large uprisings of students and workers in France and Germany, and the “Prague Spring” in Czechoslovakia. Recent research on 1968 has focused on the common characteristics and the mutually reinforcing or convergent aspects of these many uprisings all around the world.

Communications scholar Herbert Schiller wrote about the “informational infrastructure”[3] that the centers of social and political power have and can easily access to get their positions heard, understood, and hopefully accepted by mainstream society. Such is the case with the ongoing issue of Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Futenma in Okinawa and its planned relocation to Henoko, an area in the northern part of the main island presently enduring a kind of environmental assault in the name of economic development and national security.

The work of Ōshiro Tatsuhiro often tells of people caught in dire historical circumstances of war and oppression. He was the first of four Okinawan writers to win Japan's prestigious Akutagawa literary prize for his novella “Cocktail Party” (1967, translated 1989) depicting a father who seeks justice for the rape of his daughter by an American soldier in U.S.-occupied Okinawa. “Turtleback Tombs” (1966, translated 2000) narrates the ordeal of a three-generation family who take refuge from the Battle of Okinawa inside their large, traditional tomb, and find spiritual solace in local rituals honoring their ancestors. What distinguishes Ōshiro's writing is his knack for moving beyond the realm of daily media reports and explanatory essays to portray individuals coping with crises imposed on them by distant governments. He draws extensively on Okinawan culture, not only as “local color” background, but to express the motivations and values of people who seek to maintain their connections with the past, retrieve their ancestral lands forcibly occupied by the U.S. military since the end of World War II, and restore their peaceful lives.

The proposed 2nd Anglo-Japanese civilian exchange, originally planned for October 1942, never eventuated partly due to differences in the interpretations of what constitutes a merchant seaman and views on whether the Hague Convention should apply. The failure of the exchange meant that over 3,000 Japanese and British civilian internees as well as another 2,000 or so Japanese and American civilian internees remained in internment camps until at least August 1945. At the heart of the negotiations were 331 Japanese pilots and pearl divers who had been employed in the pearling industry until the outbreak of war. The impasse would impact attempts at civilian exchange involving multiple powers throughout the Asia-Pacific War.