This week: the Great Kanto Earthquake was also the backdrop for one of the most famous murders of 1920s Japan,…
This week: in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, thousands of Koreans living in Tokyo were massacred by angry…
This week: the question of whether Hirohito would remain emperor of Japan or be replaced with “Emperor Kumazawa” was, in…
In January, 1946, a man came to the headquarters of the American occupation government of Japan and claimed to be…
First thing’s first: I made a numbering error a few weeks back, and so to get us back on the…
This week: some reflections on the hollow nature of Manchurian “independence”, and on what kept the state going if so…
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, 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…