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.
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Episode 617 - I am Legend, Part 4
This week, we cover how the legend of Yoshitsune as told in Gikeiki describes his demise. Which is how his tale ends, unless of course you know the tr...
Episode 616 - I am Legend, Part 3
This week, we come to the text that more than any other helps build the Yoshitsune legend: Gikeiki. Here, at long last, we see the legend of Yoshitsun...
Episode 615 - I am Legend, Part 2
This week, the Yoshitsune legend finds its legs with Heike Monogatari--one of the most epic works in Japanese history. Except that while Yoshitsune is...
Episode 614 - I am Legend, Part 1
Note: I made a mistake recording this episode but did not have time to go back and fix it. It's episode 614!
This week, we're starting a three-p...
Episode 613 - I am a Cat
This week, we're covering one of the most titanic names in Japanese literature--Natsume Soseki--and the work that propelled him to fame. How did the t...
Episode 612 - The Final Frontier, Part 8
This week: Japanese Manchuria comes crashing down as a combination of poorly planned colonial policies and a worsening war situation see imperial powe...
Episode 611 - The Final Frontier, Part 7
This week: some reflections on the hollow nature of Manchurian "independence", and on what kept the state going if so few of its own residents believe...
Episode 610 - The Final Frontier, Part 6
This week on the podcast: the Japanese presence in Manchuria was never particularly large, even at its height. So how did Japanese rule in Manchuria l...
Episode 609 - The Final Frontier, Part 5
In the last episode of 2025: a bomb "mysteriously" goes off just outside Mukden during the evening of September 18, 1931. Less than six months later,...
Episode 608 - The Final Frontier, Part 4
As Japan enters the 1920s, national policy becomes increasingly liberalized--but Manchuria remains a holdout of extremists who, if anything, begin to...
Episode 607 - The Final Frontier, Part 3
This week: Japan's military and civilian leaders find themselves at a crossroads in Manchuria in the 1910s, as views begin to split around what the po...
Episode 606 - The Final Frontier, Part 2
This week: after the Russo-Japanese War, Japan inherited a rather unusual arrangement in Manchuria, which would become the basis of its empire in the...
Episode 605 - The Final Frontier, Part 1
This week, we're turning our attention to possibly the most unique of Japan's colonial ventures during the imperial era: Manchuria. Most know about Ma...
Episode 604 - The Bureaucrats, Part 3
For a long time, the bureaucracy--in all its elitist, meritocratic glory--has taken a great deal of the credit for Japan's postwar economic miracle. B...
Episode 603 - The Bureaucrats, Part 2
This week: the Meiji Bureaucracy, in all its glory. How did the system actually work? What sorts of people did it attract? And what happened when the...
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...