Claim OwnershipHistory of Japan
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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.
605 Episodes
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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 learn about the lives of samurai and commoners in Wakayama during the final decades before the great crises that would end feudalism in Japan? Show notes here.
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 to be all about framing her life--what do we know about her upbringing, and about the city she grew up in during the twilight years of Japanese feudalism? Show notes here.
1This week, we wrap up our series on Hiroshige with a few lingering questions about his career. How much does his "artistic borrowing" really matter? What's his relationship to Hiroshiges II and III? What about his second marriage and daughter? And ultimately, what makes him so damn famous--and what can we learn from that? Show notes here.
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 long gap? And what changed to finally allow him to break out artistically? Show notes here.
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 week with a general discussion of the world of ukiyo-e during the late 1700s before moving into Hiroshige's early life and his entry into the world of woodblock printing. Show notes here.
This week on the podcast, something completely different! I'm getting some help talking about poetry from Mike Freiling, whose new translation of Hyakunin Isshu, entitled One Hundred Poems of Old Japan, will be out just a little over a week from now. We'll talk tanka vs. haiku, how translation works, and share a few favorites from one of Japan's most classic poetic compilations. Show notes here.
Our final episode in this miniseries brings conspiracism in Japan to the present day, as we discuss a wave of antisemitic conspiracy theorists from the 80s and 90s and the impact of the internet on conspiracism in Japan and around the world. Finally, we'll look at how things stand today, and go over some final thoughts on conspiracism in general. Show notes here.
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 postwar era by right-wing politicians and even members of the American occupation government. That conspiracy would, in turn, help shape both prewar and postwar politics on a profound level. Show notes here.
This week, conspiracism takes a new twist in Japan, from paranoid worries about Christianity to paranoid beliefs in "Western encirclement". How did this new form of conspiracism help drive Japan's descent into fascism, empire, and eventually the self-destructive decisions of the Second World War? Show notes here.
This week, we explore the "Christian conspiracies" of Edo Period Japan. Working backwards from the Osaka Incident of 1827, when a group of supposed Christian spirit mediums were uncovered as a part of a fraud investigation, we'll look at how Christianity was transformed from an actual religion into an evil spiritual threat to the foundations of Japan itself. Show notes here.
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 that the century from 1543-1639 shaped Japan--as the source of its first conspiracist moment! Show notes here.
This week, something a bit different: the start of a history of conspiracy theories in Japan. This first episode is mostly framing: what is conspiracism as a mindset, and how is it different from actual conspiracies? Show notes here.
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 very much its own thing--and, for a decade or so in the 1960s and 1970s, dominating the Japanese box office. Show notes here.
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 of Japanese film. Why did jidaigeki, a staple of pre-1945 film, storm back with a vengeance to the big screen after the end of World War II? What makes post-1945 samurai films distinctive or unique? And what about their relationship to another archetype of international film: the American Western? Show notes here.
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. This week: what do we know about early jidaigeki, and how do they fit into the wider history of early Japanese film? Show notes here.
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 different direction from the other yokozuna before him (or at least, from most of the other yokozuna before him). Plus some final thoughts on sumo today. Show notes here.
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 compensation for rikishi, and a final section on one of the most infamous moments of the 64th yokozuna's career. Show notes here.
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 Americans dominating in the top division. But unlike Konishiki, he has the potential to go one step further. So, how does a guy from Waimanalo become the first non-Japanese citizen ever to claim the title of yokozuna? Show notes here.
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? What was his early career like? And how did he come to be known by the name Akebono-the rising sun? Show notes here.
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 career. But two of the rikishi he recruits to train under him after retirement--Konishiki Yasokichi and Akebono Taro--will change sumo forever. Show notes here.
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I assume the term at 7:00 should be "keiretsu" instead of zaibatsu for the second time.
STOP SWEARING. It demeans both you and your dimwitted female interlocutor. At a minimum, WARN listeners ahead of time, that the show contains gratuitous foul language likely to decrease listeners' respect for Japanese civilisation.
just finished replaying this series... Wow.
Do not swear. Do not have an airhead female interlocutor. This episode breaks both rules. You ought to be ashamed of it, given that your other episodes set a high standard. Leave bathos to the English.
FIVE continents, yes. 5 in 1707 and 5 in 2021 and 5 forever, Commie propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding.
😍😍
An otherwise interesting episode ruined. By what? By a stubborn refusal to use he and his, and an insistence on using instead THEY and THEIR. A lord of the 1500s-1700s was never 'they'. Defy political correctness and use the proper word, HE, please.
How many kids did the average Japanese family have, say, around the beginning of the 20th century?
Just as a thing cannot be "extremely unique" it cannot be "extremely unprecedented." To insist on this point is not pedantic. Terminological exactitude is what makes nuanced language possible.
There are no gradations within UNIQUE. Thus, contrary to what this episode asserts, something cannot be "extremely unique."
i like your podcast a lot and you are doing a great job , thanks for making this great podcast , i really want to know about mongols invasion of japan . i really hope there is a way that i can contact you for a project that im working on .
Lay off the cheek. British Empire rule was the best thing that ever happened to India.
show notes link leads to 404 error message
Thanks for a very good episode. (^^,) P.S. All the movies and TV series he talks about here, you can get at InternetArchive.com
LOVE this podcast! Really interesting, and has some really funny parts too! Highly recommend :)
This podcast is sooooo amazing!!!!
Thanks for your podcast! I've personally read 3 nonfiction books that have disagreed with my school teachings, eachother, Wikipedia & oddly manga/anime. (Yeah, I know the last one shouldn't be taken seriously but when it's set in the past & is from Nippon, one must assume there's some truth to it) but this seems to correct it all and put everything in place!
On Episode 30 - Listening 5 years late and loving the podcast so far. Apologies if you've already corrected this somewhere in the 230 episodes I haven't yet listened to, but Blackthorne was not single in the books. He was married and had children he left behind, and does feel some guilt and angst over the situation. And while he isn't offered the chance to return home in the book, you are given the sense that he increasingly considers Japan his home and very possibly wouldn't go back even if given the chance. And my theory on why the author would choose to change names is that that way, he can feel more free to take tons of creative license and invent fake love stories and whatnot without feeling like he's lying about real people. The characters are based on them - they aren't actually them.
An especially good episode, with excellent poetry quotations.