For our first episode of 2025: “otaku culture” as a phenomenon began to emerge, in part, as a reaction against…
Our last episode of 2024 is also the first episode in a series on one of Japan’s most distinctive cultural…
This week, the story of an Edo period writer whose primary claim to fame was producing decent ripoffs of people…
This week: Taiwan was the first overseas territory annexed by Japan with a large existing population. So how did the…
This week: how does the history of Shinto intersect with the colonization of Hokkaido? What role does Shinto’s transition from…
What even is religion, when you get down to it? Why do we treat religion the way that we do?…
This week is a continuation of our exploration of the history of reiki. How did Takata Hawayo, a poor woman…
This week: the origins of one of the most popular pseudo-medical traditions out there. Where does reiki, the notion that…
This week: what can we learn about the past if we look not at elite literature, but at the lowbrow…
This week, we conclude our look at canine history in Japan with the nation’s most famous dog: Hachiko. You might…