History of Japan
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History of Japan
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.
Kamakailang Episode
615 episode
Episode 602 - The Bureaucrats, Part 1
In America, when we think of bureaucracy, it doesn't conjure the best associations. In Japan, meanwhile, the bureaucracy has a long history as one of...
Episode 601 - On Grad School (w/Charlotte Lai!)
One of the questions I get asked a lot is about grad school: what's it like, who's it for, what applications are like, and so on. But I've been out of...
Episode 600 - The Six-Hundredth Episode
Here we are again, my friends! It's been two years since our last Q and A, and now it's time for a new one. Thank you all for your questions, and here...
Episode 599 - Ain't It Grand?
This week, we're talking about one of the oddest moments of the final years of feudalism: a spontaneous outbreak of dancing and religious worship coll...
Episode 598 - Koume's World, Part 5
This week, we're finishing our time with Kawai Koume by looking at how life in Wakayama had changed by the mid-1870s. Feudalism is no more, Confuciani...
Episode 597 - Koume's World, Part 4
This week, the Kawai family has finally made good in the world of feudal Wakayama--just in time for that world to come down around their ears. How did...
Episode 596 - Koume's World, Part 3
After a long hiatus, the diary of Kawai Koume picks back up in 1853, a year of absolutely no world-shaking importance in Japanese history whatsoever-w...
Episode 595 - Koume's World, Part 2
This week, we'll look at the first chunk of Kawai Koume's diary, which deals with life in the 1830s--or as she knew it, the Tenpo Era. What can we lea...
Episode 594 - Koume's World, Part 1
This week, we're starting a new miniseries focused on the life of Kawai Koume, a samurai woman living in Wakayama in the early 1800s. Today is going t...
Episode 593 - The Artist of the Open Road, Part 3
This week, we wrap up our series on Hiroshige with a few lingering questions about his career. How much does his "artistic borrowing" really matter? W...
Episode 592 - The Artist of the Open Road, Part 2
This week, we're covering Hiroshige's emergence as an artist, which took 20 years after he finished his apprenticeship in the Utagawa school. Why the...
Episode 591 - The Artist of the Open Road, Part 1
This week, we're starting a new miniseries on the life of one of the most famous artists in Japanese history: Utagawa Hiroshige. We'll start off this...
Episode 590 - An Interview with Dr. Mike Freiling
This week on the podcast, something completely different! I'm getting some help talking about poetry from Mike Freiling, whose new translation of Hyak...
Episode 589 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 6
Our final episode in this miniseries brings conspiracism in Japan to the present day, as we discuss a wave of antisemitic conspiracy theorists from th...
Episode 588 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 5
This week, we're covering the postwar "Red Scare" in Japan, which has roots going back to the early 20th century but which was boosted during the post...
Episode 587 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 4
This week, conspiracism takes a new twist in Japan, from paranoid worries about Christianity to paranoid beliefs in "Western encirclement". How did th...
Episode 586 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 3
This week, we explore the "Christian conspiracies" of Edo Period Japan. Working backwards from the Osaka Incident of 1827, when a group of supposed Ch...
Episode 585 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 2
Japan's "Christian Century" is the source of many fascinating aspects of Japanese history, from modern firearms to tenpura. But there's one more way t...
Episode 584 - The All-Seeing Eye, Part 1
This week, something a bit different: the start of a history of conspiracy theories in Japan. This first episode is mostly framing: what is conspiraci...
Episode 583 - The Men of Chivalry, Part 3
This week: we take a look at the genre of the yakuza movie, or ninkyo eiga, which started off as a branch of the samurai film genre before becoming ve...
Episode 582 - The Men of Chivalry, Part 2
This week: we take a look at postwar samurai film/jidaigeki in order to understand better the trajectory of the most influential genre in the history...
Episode 581 - The Men of Chivalry, Part 1
This week, we're starting a history of the most famous genre in the history of Japanese film: the jidaigeki, and its related genre of the ninkyo eiga....
Episode 580 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 7
This week: we wrap up the miniseries with the end of Akebono's career, as the first gaijin yokozuna takes his post-dohyo trajectory in a very differen...
Episode 579 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 6
This week: Akebono becomes a yokozuna, and finds himself burdened with new expectations on and off the dohyo. Plus, a brief foray into pay and compens...
Episode 578 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 5
This week: in the span of just a few years, Akebono goes from a rookie in sumo to one of its most prominent names, and alongside Konishiki one of the...
Episode 577 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 4
This week: Chad Rowan, who will be the first non-Japanese yokozuna in history, is the subject for the rest of our episodes. How did he come to sumo? W...
Episode 576 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 3
This week: after Taiho, the floodgates open as more non-Japanese rikishi begin to enter the sport. One of them, Takamiyama, has a good but not great c...
Episode 575 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 2
This week: Taiho begins his grand sumo career, and quickly proves to be one of the best ever to do it. We'll use his career to discuss: what does grea...
Episode 574 - The Kings of the Ring, Part 1
This week, we're beginning a new miniseries on the legends of Japan's most ancient sport: sumo. What can we learn about Japan and Japanese identity by...
Episode 573 - The Revolutionary, Part 8
For our final episode of this miniseries: Miyazaki Manabu faces down with the National Police Agency as he finds himself the prime suspect in Japan's...
Episode 572 - The Revolutionary, Part 7
In our penultimate episode for this miniseries: Miyazaki Manabu narrowly escapes doing prison time, only to end up back in the underworld first of Osa...
Episode 571 - The Revolutionary, Part 6
This week: Miyazaki's time as a politics reporter, the end of his reporting career, and his return to the family business. How did he go, in the span...
Episode 570 - The Revolutionary, Part 5
This week: Miyazaki Manabu's dramatic departure from the Communist Party, as his faith in the revolution wanes. What does a wannabe college revolution...
Episode 569 - The Revolutionary, Part 4
This week: Miyazaki Manabu goes from the Sodai struggle at Waseda to an active participant in the violent clashes of the late 1960s student movement,...
Episode 568 - The Revolutionary, Part 3
This week on the podcast: Miyazaki Manabu faces his first battle as a college activist with the administration of his own school at Waseda University....
Episode 567 - The Revolutionary, Part 2
This week: Miyazaki Manabu completes his transformation from son of a yakuza boss to a committed member of the Communist party. After all, it turns ou...
Episode 566 - The Revolutionary, Part 1
This week: the start of a multi-part "modernized biography" intended to help us explore postwar Japan through the lens of a single, fascinating life....
Episode 565 - Riot Girls
This week: what do we know about women and the wrong end of the law during the Tokugawa Period? Given the male-dominated nature of the feudal social o...
Episode 564 - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party, Part 3
This week: outside of big urban riots, how did violence figure into the daily life of the Edo period? To answer this question, we'll take a look at on...
Episode 563 - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party, Part 2
This week, we cover the second and third of Edo's three great riots in 1787 and 1866. How did samurai and commoners talk about these acts of mass viol...