Since the new era of infrared astronomy was opened by the Two Micron Sky Survey by Neugebauer et al. in the early 1960s, about a half century has passed. During this time, observations have expanded rapidly and widely, to almost every field of astronomy, to reveal new perspectives on the universe. As a result, infrared astronomy has become one of the major branches of astronomy, along with optical, radio, X-ray as well as high-energy particle astronomy. In Japan, we started our infrared astronomical activities at a rather early time, under relatively poor technical and environmental conditions, and using somewhat unconventional methods to overcome these difficulties. Here, a brief survey is presented of developments concerning infrared astronomy during the past half century, while mainly recollecting our footprints in the stream of world activities.

中文翻译：

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半个世纪的红外天文学——日本足迹的个人回忆。

由于 Neugebauer 等人的两微米巡天开启了红外天文学的新时代。20世纪60年代初，大约半个世纪过去了。在此期间，观测迅速而广泛地扩展到几乎所有天文学领域，以揭示宇宙的新观点。因此，红外天文学与光学、射电、X射线以及高能粒子天文学一起成为天文学的主要分支之一。在日本，我们的红外天文活动起步较早，技术和环境条件相对较差，并采用了一些非常规的方法来克服这些困难。在此，对半个世纪以来红外天文学的发展进行简要回顾，同时主要回顾我们在世界活动洪流中的足迹。