This week, we’re discussing the autobiography of a troublemaking, low-ranking samurai whose life didn’t reshape Japan, but whose tale can…
This week, we’re going to zoom in on the kind of life that doesn’t usually make the big picture history…
This week, the crew of the Breskens is freed at last. Plus some final thoughts on Tokugawa diplomacy. Sources Hesselink,…
The Breskens crew arrive in Edo, with the question of how they are to be treated looming over them. At…
This week, we’re taking a look at the foreign policy of Edo Japan by starting a deep dive into a…
This week, we take a look at the peasant uprisings in Aizu domain in 1868 to continue our exploration of…
While the Meiji Restoration was going on, where was everybody else? We’ll start trying to answer that question today with…
This week, we cover an obscure bit of samurai history: the Keian Incident, a planned coup against the Tokugawa Shoguns…
This week we cover the life and career of the legendary judge Oka Tadasuke, who rose from minor samurai to…
This week, we start a look at the history of the city of Tokyo. How did the frontier fishing village…