History of Japan

If the first translation of a text on smallpox vaccination in Japan was finished in 1820, how did it take another 29 years for the first mass vaccination campaigns to begin? The answers involve everyt...

27 Jan 202339min

This week: the elimination of smallpox is probably one of the greatest medical accomplishments in human history. The vaccine that made it possible, however, was invented during a time of isolation for...

20 Jan 202336min

This week, we're looking at the implosion of the Japanese New Left with a focus on the factional conflicts of the Zengakuren. How did a student youth movement end up divided into 20+ factions, the two...

13 Jan 202335min

This week, we're looking at a very different kind of 60s protest movement: an attempt to build a cross-sectarian, non-ideological movement to oppose the American war in Vietnam. How did the anti-Vietn...

6 Jan 202337min

This week, for the final episode of 2022: the Zenkyoto movement arrives at Japan's largest private school. Plus: how did a movement that grew so big so quickly fall apart just as fast? Show notes her...

23 Des 202236min

This week, we're beginning a month on radical activism in the 1960s with a look at the student uprisings of 1968. Today is all about where those uprisings came from, how they're related to the "two Ze...

16 Des 202236min

This week: a long-requested dive into the ronin police force known as the Shinsengumi. Who were the members of this group, and how, despite their rather marginal role in the history of the 1860s, have...

9 Des 202236min

This week is all about a biography of a fascinating figure of the Meiji Restoration: Oguri Tadamasa. But it's also about much more: about how the present shapes our view of the past, and about how, as...

2 Des 202238min