The title of the Japanese government's White Paper on the Economy for the 31st year of Showa (1956) was "The 'postwar' era is over." That same year, a delegation from the World Bank headed by Alfred Watkins spent five months studying the feasibility of extending a loan for an expressway linking the cities of Kobe and Nagoya. Their report noted, "The roads in Japan are unbelievably bad," and urged construction of a modern highway network to support the country's industrial development.
It was 60 years ago this month that Tokyo-based publisher Shincho-sha, whose name translates as "New Currents," launched weekly magazine Shukan Shincho, making it the first venture by a general publisher from outside the news media. The weeklies had previously been within the purview of two major newspapers, which began publishing Shukan Asahi and Sunday Mainichi almost simultaneously in the spring of 1922.
While Westerners tend to commemorate anniversaries at the half-century mark, in east Asia it's common to observe the 60th anniversary, called kanreki in Japanese, which is based on the completion of the lunar calendar's sexagenary cycle used for counting years.