Announcment - No episode this week
Heads up folks: no new episode this week. I came down with a pretty bad bug and it's put me very behind on production, plus my voice is a bi...
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History of Japan
A weekly podcast on Japanese history, covering everything from prehistory to the modern era. Additional information available at the podcast blog, at
Episodes
20 of 658 episodesEpisode 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...
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 fi...
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 i...
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...
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 h...
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...
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 ph...
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...
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 poli...
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...
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 befor...
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...
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...
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, he...
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:...
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...
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...
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 Fortune...
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 th...