This week, we’re starting a longform look at Japan’s most prominent political dynasty: the Hatoyama family, which has been a…
This week, we’re covering the art of rakugo–storytelling with a twist! How did rakugo emerge from the history of Buddhism,…
How did one man’s determination to get paid end up producing one of the best records we have of a…
This week: Japan’s empire in Micronesia comes apart under the face of both the miscalculations of military leadership and the…
So far, we’ve talked about how Micronesia came under Japanese rule, but what was Japan’s rule over the region like?…
When World War I began, many among the Japanese leadership were hesistant to take advantage of the opportunity to move…
Japan would seize control of German Micronesia in the fall of 1914, but Japanese interest in the region goes back…
This week: the bizarre story of an attempted coup in Korea that, along the way, touches on everything from Japanese…
If the first translation of a text on smallpox vaccination in Japan was finished in 1820, how did it take…
This week: the elimination of smallpox is probably one of the greatest medical accomplishments in human history. The vaccine that…