History of Japan

This week on the Footnotes to the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: many describe Zen as the religion of the samurai. In reality, it was not--but samurai influence was crucial to making Zen a ...

27 Sep 202434min

This week, we're continuing last week's footnote on the postwar ultraright. How did the fall of the Soviet Union affect the anti-communist focus of the extreme right? How has its rhetoric been shaped ...

20 Sep 202435min

This week's footnote: the first of two parts on the postwar extreme right. This week, we're mostly focusing on the extreme right in the first few decades of the Cold War, and in particular on the stor...

13 Sep 202434min

This week, we're continuing last week's footnote on daily life in Meiji Japan. Topics covered this week include life as a conscript in the army, changes to Japanese cuisine during the Meiji years, and...

6 Sep 202437min

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History Footnotes: what was it like to live in the Meiji Era? Join us on a journey through a day in 1900, as we discuss breakfast foods, education, an...

30 Aug 202437min

For our second footnote to the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: a simple question that definitely won't result in an overpacked episode. Was Imperial Japan a fascist state? How can we even de...

16 Aug 202442min

This week, we have our first Footnote to the Revised Introduction to Japanese history, expanding on questions we didn't get to touch on during the main series. This week, our question is: what do we k...

9 Aug 202440min

On the final episode of the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the LDP completely fails to meet the challenge of the bubble collapse, and the Lost Decades see Japan's economy stagnate and its p...

2 Aug 202437min