This week: some reflections on the hollow nature of Manchurian “independence”, and on what kept the state going if so…
This week on the podcast: the Japanese presence in Manchuria was never particularly large, even at its height. So how…
In the last episode of 2025: a bomb “mysteriously” goes off just outside Mukden during the evening of September 18,…
As Japan enters the 1920s, national policy becomes increasingly liberalized–but Manchuria remains a holdout of extremists who, if anything, begin…
This week: Japan’s military and civilian leaders find themselves at a crossroads in Manchuria in the 1910s, as views begin…
This week: after the Russo-Japanese War, Japan inherited a rather unusual arrangement in Manchuria, which would become the basis of…
This week, we’re turning our attention to possibly the most unique of Japan’s colonial ventures during the imperial era: Manchuria.…
For a long time, the bureaucracy–in all its elitist, meritocratic glory–has taken a great deal of the credit for Japan’s…
This week: the Meiji Bureaucracy, in all its glory. How did the system actually work? What sorts of people did…
In America, when we think of bureaucracy, it doesn’t conjure the best associations. In Japan, meanwhile, the bureaucracy has a…