The following section is the special section for the 1st Optical Manipulation Conference (OMC’14) held on 22nd–25th April 2014 at Pacifico Yokohama, Kanagawa, Japan. The special section contains 10 papers based on the presentations at OMC′14. Each paper was reviewed and accepted under the editorial policy of Optical Review.

The aims of OMC′14 were to present and learn about up-to-date scientific subjects and new technologies related to the field of optical manipulation and its satellite topics such as structured optical fields. The conference topic also included plasmon-resonant fields and metamaterials for optical manipulation. The conference was organized and sponsored by the Japan Society of Applied Physics in cooperation with the Optical Society of Japan, the Laser Society of Japan, and the Chemical Society of Japan. In total, 67 papers were presented at the conference, which includes 4 plenary and 5 invited lectures, and 32 contributed oral and 26 poster presentations. Participants were not only from Asian countries (Japan and Taiwan), but also from the UK, Spain, Czech Republic, Australia, and the USA. We believe that this conference provided scientific and professional networking as well as scientific inspiration to the attendee. The 2nd conference of this series is to be held in April 2015 again in Yokohama.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all the participants in the conference, and the organizers and sponsors, and also wish to thank the editors of this special section, Prof. M. Ashida and Prof. R. Morita.

Editors in Chief of the Special Section

Hiromi Okamoto

Takashige Omatsu