This week, we look at the flip side of the chaos of the Sengoku era in the form of two…
This week: the Muromachi bakufu comes crashing down, thanks to a combination of structural weaknesses and a shogun who is…
This week: Go-Daigo’s regime collapses, and a second samurai government, the Muromachi bakufu, emerges. How did Ashikaga Takauji successfully establish…
This week: the dramatic career of Emperor Go-Daigo, who brought down the Kamakura shogunate and ended Hojo rule in Japan.…
This week: why did the Mongols invade Japan? How did a seemingly invincible military machine falter in its assaults on…
This week: the rise of the Minamoto clan, the destruction of the Taira clan, and the birth of a new…
This week, it’s a listener question episode! Let’s talk about the topics I’d like to cover, a D&D party made…
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 they become one of the most famous organizations in Japanese history?
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 a result, the ways we talk about someone long dead can shift and change as well.
The Jokyu Rebellion is one of the more minor conflicts in Japanese history; yet it also represents a tipping of…