History of Japan

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 bit shot. I'll see you all next week.

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 many today seem to think the matagi will be extinct themselves before too long? Show notes here.

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 fit into our knowledge of premodern Japan? Show notes here.

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 it? How did the breakout itself play out? And what are its legacies, both in terms of Australia-Japan relations and the wider question of Japanese "fanaticism" in WWII? Show notes here.

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 history of Japan-Australia relations all the way up to 1940 and the role Australia played in Japanese militarist thought. Show notes here.

At long last, the fight over how to reconstruct Tokyo is done. But what did rebuilding the imperial capital actually look like? Show notes here.

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 foremost bureaucrats--would become so frustrated with the experience that it would crush him completely. In the process, the fight would reveal some deep divisions over the importance of the capital and the nature of the postwar state itself. Show notes here.

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 phenomenon in the history of modern urbanism, and with the history of Edo's transformation into Tokyo and all the modern vices that came with it. Show notes here.

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 seismic shift within the nation's political sphere. This week: who was Ito Noe, and how did her murder in a time of national emergency reflect a shift in Japan's political discourse? Show notes here.

This week: in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, thousands of Koreans living in Tokyo were massacred by angry mobs as well as policemen and soldiers. What animated the survivors to engage in such horrific violence, and how does it reflect both the wider history of the Japan-Korea relationship and the mindset many of us carry into our darkest moments? Note: no new episode next week, as I'm traveling in Japan. Show notes here.

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 was one of the most devastating catastrophes in modern Japanese history, but in English scholarship it's often overshadowed by the destruction of the Second World War. This week we'll kick off a multipart series on the quake and its legacy with a simple question: what do we know about the immediate aftermath? Show notes here.

This week: the question of whether Hirohito would remain emperor of Japan or be replaced with "Emperor Kumazawa" was, in fact, decided before the Southern Court claimant had ever gone public. So why was the idea of removing Hirohito never taken seriously, and what did Kumazawa do once it became clear he was never going to sit on the Crysanthemum Throne? And how, strangely, does this all tie back to a Geocities era webpage about alternative medicine? Show notes here.

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 was he, why did he do this, and how does his story connect to an obscure figure from a civil war that happened more than 500 years earlier? Show notes here.

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 630! This week, I'm very lucky to be joined by journalist and writer (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Evelyn Iritani to talk about her new book Safe Passage (and a bit about her old book An Ocean Between Us). Check the book out here for a look into an underexplored moment in the history of US-Japan relations. Show notes here.

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, here's a bonus episode from my old podcast Criminal Records. We'll be back on June 12! Show notes here.

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: the final steps of Michinaga's rise, his legacy, and that of Eiga Monogatari. Show notes here.

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 of the emperor's harem, and his closest confidant in the world. Without a grandson to make crown prince, he'll be finished. What is to be done? And how will his strategy accidentally promote a rivalry between two of the most famous women in all of Japanese history? Show notes here.

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 and dealer who lays out a perfect blueprint for assuming political power from an older sibling. And we'll get to see Kaneie's sons fight a very similar battle--leading to the rise of the man who would take the Fujiwara to the zenith of their power, Fujiwara no Michinaga. Show notes here.

We're starting a new series taking a look at an oft neglected classic of Heian literature: The Eiga Monogatari, or Tale of Flowering Fortunes, which tells the history of the great Fujiwara family at the height of its power. This week: what do we know about Eiga Monogatari and how it fits into the wider literary history of classical Japan? Show notes here.

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 the Seattle Post-Intelligencer bothered to pay much attention to. But in fact, that story tells us a lot about US-Japan relations. Show notes here.

This week: rumors swirled around Port Angeles for decades after WWII that a Japanese man, Osasa Masaru, who had lived there from 1930-39 was in fact a Japanese spy who'd been sent to Port Angeles to report on the movements of the American Pacific Fleet. The reality is at once far more interesting and far more mundane. Show notes here.

This week: what role does a sleepy town in Washington's Olympic Peninsula play in Japan's history? Well, more than you'd think. We'll look at three different connections between Japan and Port Angeles over the next few weeks, starting with the story of some castaways who found themselves adrift nearby almost 200 years ago. Show notes here.

This week: how does the Taiheiki depict its most famous characters? How does it describe the downfall of the Hojo? And from that, what can we say about the charge that it's purely derivative from a more famous text? Show notes here.

The Taiheiki is arguably one of the most dismissed works of literature in Japanese history, doomed to always exist solely in comparison to the far more highly regarded Heike Monogatari. But even so, there's a lot to draw the interest of the interested historian. So, what can we learn about medieval Japan from its most famously "eh" work of literature? Show notes here.

This week: the manga industry during World War II. Plus some thoughts on the development of shojo manga, and finally a look at Tezuka Osamu and the ways in which his work helped create the manga market that exists today. Show notes here.

Histories of manga tend to skip from the colorful woodblocks of the Edo period directly to the post-WWII industry we'd recognize today. But what do we lose when we do that? And what do we gain when we do investigate the century or so that lies between those two moments? Show notes here.

This week: manga is today one of the most ubiquitous forms of entertainment in Japan. But the idea of comics as we might understand them has a much longer history. So how did we get from there to here--what, in other words, is the origin of Japanese manga/ We'll look today at the earliest known examples as we try to understand the origins of manga as a form. Show notes here.

This week, we're tackling the most legendary samurai in Japanese history: Miyamoto Musashi. Why is he so famous, what do we actually know about him, and why is there such a big gap between the story most are familiar with and what our actual sources have to say? Show notes here.

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 truth: that Yoshitsune actually escaped to Hokkaido, became a god, and then left for the mainland to become Genghis Khan. Wait, what? Show notes here.

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 Yoshitsune taking a form that a modern audience might recognize--and in the process, beginning to diverge pretty substantially (though not entirely) from the historical record. Show notes here.

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 a bigger deal here than he is in Azuma Kagami, he's still far from the main character....so where does he show up, what changes does Heike make from the Azuma Kagami version, and what's still missing from our hero's story? Show notes here.

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-part series on the evolution of Minamoto no Yoshitsune from historical figure to national legend. This week: what do we know for sure about one of the most famous samurai in Japan, and what do our oldest available sources have to say about him? Show notes here.

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 tale of a sardonic, anonymous cat transform a relatively unknown literature professor into arguably the most famous writer in modern Japanese history? Show notes here.

This week: Japanese Manchuria comes crashing down as a combination of poorly planned colonial policies and a worsening war situation see imperial power on the mainland collapse. Plus: what do we learn about the nature of empire from a long, in-depth look at Manchuria? Show notes here.

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 believed in its promises. Show notes here.

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 last as long as it did? And what of the resistance? Show notes here.

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, Manchuria becomes an "independent country." Japan's government loses complete control over the army, all over the issue of its new "Manchurian Lifeline." And suddenly, for some reason, the last emperor of China is back! Show notes here.

As Japan enters the 1920s, national policy becomes increasingly liberalized--but Manchuria remains a holdout of extremists who, if anything, begin to take a more aggressive position on the "China Problem." How did that happen--and how did that aggressive position, seemingly overnight, become normalized back in Japan proper? Show notes here.

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 point of Japan's presence there even is. As Russia and China collapse into civil war, the new liberal post-WWI order will see the beginnings of a very different vision of what Japan's purpose on the Asian mainland even is. Show notes here.

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 region. But how, exactly, would that new empire function? And why, precisely, did it come attached to a corporation, of all things? Show notes here.

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 Manchuria because of its role in the turbulent politics of the 1930s, but Japanese involvement in the region goes back quite a bit further. But first, what even is Manchuria in the first place? Show notes here.

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. But how much of that credit does it actually deserve? Plus, some ruminations on the post-1990s fate of the bureaucracy and its general history. Show notes here.

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 United States tried to reform the system after 1945? Show notes here.

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 the central organs of the state. So, how did that happen, and why has the bureaucracy--rather uniquely among Japanese institutions--survived as long as it has? Show notes here.

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 academia for almost 10 years, so it's hard to say what things are like today. Fortunately, a listener and friend was willing to hop on and share her far more recent experiences! Thanks again to Charlotte for sharing her story. Show notes here.