This week: the age of feudalism comes crashing down, as in the span of just two years the Tokugawa shogunate…
This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the sudden assassination of the tairo Ii Naosuke sparks the rapid…
This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the beginning of the end of the Tokugawa shogunate. Commodore Perry’s…
If the obscene material you’re distributing is so avant-garde that most readers can’t tell it’s actually obscene, did you commit a crime or not? This week, we’re getting into the trial of the scandalous literary magazine editors who brought the work of James Joyce to America.
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: “closed country” isn’t quite the full story. How did Japan maintain…
Not all scam artists prey on suckers’ desire to get rich quick or cheat the system. Some of them prey on their marks’ better impulses, like their love for their pet dogs or their willingness to help a stranger in an emergency.
This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: what was life in the Edo period like? We cover everything…
This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: how did the Tokugawa bakufu operate? What did the political structure…
With options for getting rid of its convicts drying up, Britain started thinking about reforming both its prisons and the prisoners inside them. The intention behind these prison reforms was great. But attempts to create a better prison system involved wild philosophy experiments in real life, a lot of Bibles, a lot of time to think in silence, and… treadmills?