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…
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…
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…
This week: it’s the height of the Edo period, and you sail into Osaka’s harbor. What sorts of things might…
We’re covering the art of rakugo–storytelling with a twist! How did rakugo emerge from the history of Buddhism, and what has enabled its enduring popularity where contemporary entertainments like kabuki have fallen by the wayside?
If the first translation of a text on smallpox vaccination in Japan was finished in 1820, how did it take another 29 years for the first mass vaccination campaigns to begin? The answers involve everything from a German doctor accused of being a spy to networks of physicians trying to navigate obscure bureaucracy. And they might remind you more of the last few years than you’d think.