This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: crises about during the late Edo period. A crisis of samurai…
This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: Hideyoshi may have brought peace, but Tokugawa Ieyasu would be the…
This week, we look at the flip side of the chaos of the Sengoku era in the form of two…
The start of our multi-part series on the history of Osaka! Supposedly the site where Japan’s first emperor began his conquests, the city has a long history stretching back well before it even got its current name. This week is all about the first 1000-ish years of Osaka’s history, and how it became one of the country’s most important port cities.
The Pal dissent becomes the Pal myth. How did an obscure document from the Tokyo Trials end up front and center in nationalist discourse in Japan today?
Oe Kenzaburo is about as different a writer as you can think of from Kawabata Yasunari, and yet he’s Japan’s second ever Nobel laureate in literature. What sort of concerns defined his work, and what can we learn from looking at him in conjunction with Kawabata?
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?
This week, we wrap up our imperial biographies with a look at the Meiji Emperor’s relationship to three important aspects of his reign: the constitution, the wars fought in his name, and his heir. Plus, we talk Meiji’s death, and his legacy.
This week, we’re taking a look at the life of one of Japan’s most famous artists: Miyazaki Hayao. How did…
This week, we’re focusing on the height of piracy during the civil wars in Japan, and in particular the powerful…