This week: the Cowra breakout seemed, to those who lived through it, like it came out of nowhere. But nothing…
At long last, the fight over how to reconstruct Tokyo is done. But what did rebuilding the imperial capital actually…
After Tokyo was burned to the ground, the battle over how to rebuild it began almost immediately. The man leading…
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,…