- wöchentlichErscheinungsrhythmus
- 34 mintypische Länge
- vor 2 Tagenletzte Folge
This podcast, assembled by a former PhD student in History at the University of Washington, covers the entire span of Japanese history. Each week we'll tackle a new topic, ranging from prehistoric Japan to the modern day.
Folgen
Episode 647 - A Fief By Any Other Name, Part 2
There's a bit of a division in the scholarship on medieval Japan regarding whether "feudalism" is a useful scholarly category to study the period. So if we actually look at the history, what are these scholars arguing over? And what can we
Episode 646 - A Fief By Any Other Name, Part 1
What is feudalism? It's a surprisingly hard question to answer, and one that raises an interesting follow up. Here on the podcast I've been describing medieval Japan as a "feudal state" for a long time, but should I even be doing that? Show
Episode 645 - The Forgotten Radicals, Part 3
This week: the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front publishes its manifesto, and spreads beyond its original four members. But after a few months of terror bombings (and one completely botched attempt to assassinate Hirohito), the group is brou
Episode 644 - The Forgotten Radicals, Part 2
Daidoji Masashi's trajectory from college student to terrorist has a lot to do with the student movement and the New Left in 1960s Tokyo. How did his time at Hōsei University set the idealistic young man on a collision course with the ideol
Episode 643 - The Forgotten Radicals, Part 1
On August 30, 1974, a bomb went off at Mitsubishi corporate HQ in Tokyo's Marunouchi neighborhood. The culprit was a group calling itself the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front - Wolf Cell. This week: how did this radical movement grow out of
Episode 642 - The Hunters, Part 2
How does a matagi hunt actually work, and how has matagi culture evolved over the course of the 20th century? And finally: why is it that so many today seem to think the matagi will be extinct themselves before too long? Show notes here.
Episode 641 - The Hunters, Part 1
Not many have heard of the Matagi, the hunters who live in northern Honshu. What do we know of their origins and history, and how do they fit into our knowledge of premodern Japan? Show notes here.
Episode 640 - The Great Escape, Part 2
This week: the Cowra breakout seemed, to those who lived through it, like it came out of nowhere. But nothing does, so what factors led to it? How did the breakout itself play out? And what are its legacies, both in terms of Australia-Japan
Episode 639 - The Great Escape, Part 1
In a wide-ranging episode intended just to be the introduction to the largest mass prisoner breakout of WWII, we first have to tackle...the history of Japan-Australia relations all the way up to 1940 and the role Australia played in Japanes
Episode 638 - The Catastrophe, Part 6
At long last, the fight over how to reconstruct Tokyo is done. But what did rebuilding the imperial capital actually look like? Show notes here.
Episode 637 - The Catastrophe, Part 5
After Tokyo was burned to the ground, the battle over how to rebuild it began almost immediately. The man leading the charge--one of Japan's foremost bureaucrats--would become so frustrated with the experience that it would crush him comple
Episolde 636 - The Catastrophe, Part 4
Why did so many greet the destruction of Tokyo not with consternation, but seeming joy? The answer has to do with one of the most complex phenomenon in the history of modern urbanism, and with the history of Edo's transformation into Tokyo
Episode 635 - The Catastrophe, Part 3
This week: the Great Kanto Earthquake was also the backdrop for one of the most famous murders of 1920s Japan, one that set the stage for a seismic shift within the nation's political sphere. This week: who was Ito Noe, and how did her murd
Episode 634 - The Catastrophe, Part 2
This week: in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, thousands of Koreans living in Tokyo were massacred by angry mobs as well as policemen and soldiers. What animated the survivors to engage in such horrific violence, and how does it
Episode 633 - The Catastrophe, Part 1
The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 was one of the most devastating catastrophes in modern Japanese history, but in English scholarship it's often overshadowed by the destruction of the Second World War. This week we'll kick off a multipart
Episode 632 - The Pretender, Part 2
This week: the question of whether Hirohito would remain emperor of Japan or be replaced with "Emperor Kumazawa" was, in fact, decided before the Southern Court claimant had ever gone public. So why was the idea of removing Hirohito never t
Episode 631 - The Pretender, Part 1
In January, 1946, a man came to the headquarters of the American occupation government of Japan and claimed to be Japan's true emperor. Who was he, why did he do this, and how does his story connect to an obscure figure from a civil war tha
Episode 631 - An Interview with Evelyn Iritani
First thing's first: I made a numbering error a few weeks back, and so to get us back on the correct count we're just going to skip episode 630! This week, I'm very lucky to be joined by journalist and writer (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Eve
Bonus episode - The Chishima Incident
We're coming up on the end of the school year here in the US and will have to briefly interrupt our normal programming. To tide you over, here's a bonus episode from my old podcast Criminal Records. We'll be back on June 12! Show notes here
Episode 629 - Flowering Fortunes, Part 4
Fate twists once again in Fujiwara no Michinaga's favor as an unfortunate accident of birth sees him solidify his grip on power. This week: the final steps of Michinaga's rise, his legacy, and that of Eiga Monogatari. Show notes here.
Episode 628 - Flowering Fortunes, Part 3
Fujiwara no Michinaga is on top of the world, but there's one final hurdle to overcome. His deceased brother's daughter is still the leader of the emperor's harem, and his closest confidant in the world. Without a grandson to make crown pri
Episode 627 - Flowering Fortunes, Part 2
This week: Fujiwara no Kaneie is a name we've encountered once before on the podcast. But now we get to see him in his element as a wheeler and dealer who lays out a perfect blueprint for assuming political power from an older sibling. And
Episode 626 - Flowering Fortunes, Part 1
We're starting a new series taking a look at an oft neglected classic of Heian literature: The Eiga Monogatari, or Tale of Flowering Fortunes, which tells the history of the great Fujiwara family at the height of its power. This week: what
Episode 625 - An Ocean Between Us, Part 3
This week: in 1988, a Japanese company bought a paper mill in Port Angeles, WA, in a story that basically nobody except one reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer bothered to pay much attention to. But in fact, that story tells us a l
Episode 625 - An Ocean Between Us, Part 2
This week: rumors swirled around Port Angeles for decades after WWII that a Japanese man, Osasa Masaru, who had lived there from 1930-39 was in fact a Japanese spy who'd been sent to Port Angeles to report on the movements of the American P
Episode 624 - An Ocean Between Us, Part 1
This week: what role does a sleepy town in Washington's Olympic Peninsula play in Japan's history? Well, more than you'd think. We'll look at three different connections between Japan and Port Angeles over the next few weeks, starting with
Episode 623 - The Great Peace, Part 2
This week: how does the Taiheiki depict its most famous characters? How does it describe the downfall of the Hojo? And from that, what can we say about the charge that it's purely derivative from a more famous text? Show notes here.
Episode 622 - The Great Peace, Part 1
The Taiheiki is arguably one of the most dismissed works of literature in Japanese history, doomed to always exist solely in comparison to the far more highly regarded Heike Monogatari. But even so, there's a lot to draw the interest of the
Episode 621 - The Manga Revolution, Part 3
This week: the manga industry during World War II. Plus some thoughts on the development of shojo manga, and finally a look at Tezuka Osamu and the ways in which his work helped create the manga market that exists today. Show notes here.
Episode 620 - The Manga Revolution, Part 2
Histories of manga tend to skip from the colorful woodblocks of the Edo period directly to the post-WWII industry we'd recognize today. But what do we lose when we do that? And what do we gain when we do investigate the century or so that l
