When would Sakamichi no Apollon have taken place?

Question

I have a clue on one event as I saw two of the characters saying that John Coltrane passed away and that was 1967.

Edit: I know it started in 1966, but is there a rough estimate of when the episodes/events took place?

Answer 1

The story goes from 1966 to 1977. Here's a breakdown for every episode with some exemplary screenshots for every period. This doesn't detail every single event since many episode span a larger time, but it should be easy to extrapolate from this:

1. 1966, start of the first year in high-school. I found no mention of 1966 in the anime, but it's in the manga. At the latest we can infer this later on, when we hear about Coltrane's death in ep7.
2. Still summer 1966
3. End of summer 1966
4. Christmas 1966
5. January 1967 (first day of school after winter vacation)
6. April 1967, start of the second school year
7. Summer 1967 Since they have the festival afterwards and festivals tend to be held in autumn afaik, the episode might span a few months.
8. Winter 1967 (plans for Christmas) Since Jun came back this summer and wasn't disowned yet when he last appeared, the flashbacks must be referring to the very beginning of the Anpo protests, which according to Wikipedia started only in 1968.
9. Christmas 1967
10. Starts (probably) after winter vacation, so it's January 1968. Continues until summer 1968 (by now they are in their third and final year).
11. ~Autumn 1968, last school festival
12. ~March 1969. Graduation from high school. "Eight years later", so probably 1977