History of Japan

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.

16 Jan 34min

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?...

9 Jan 38min

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'...

26 Des 202536min

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 Prob...

19 Des 202538min

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 a...

12 Des 202538min

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 fu...

5 Des 202536min

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 polit...

28 Nov 202534min

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 deserv...

22 Nov 202536min