History of Japan
Detajet e Kanalit
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.
Episode të Fundit
611 episode
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...
Episode 562 - You Gotta Fight for Your Right to Party, Part 1
This week: the first of three episodes on urban rioting in Tokugawa period Japan. This week, we're covering the first two urban riots in the history o...
Episode 561 - The Otaku, Part 3
In the final episode of this series: how did "otaku culture" spread overseas when it was so stigmatized at home, and what can all this tell us about J...
Episode 560 - The Otaku, Part 2
For our first episode of 2025: "otaku culture" as a phenomenon began to emerge, in part, as a reaction against the crass commercialism of postwar Japa...
Episode 559 - The Otaku, Part 1
Our last episode of 2024 is also the first episode in a series on one of Japan's most distinctive cultural phenomenons: otaku culture. This week: is t...