This week: it’s the height of the Edo period, and you sail into Osaka’s harbor. What sorts of things might…
Note: due to a numbering error on my end, I recorded this episode as 487. It is actually 488. This…
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.
This week: Emperor Komei attempts to protect tradition in a nation beset by crisis. However, his efforts will be brought…
This week: the beginning of a multipart biography of two of the best documented figures we know very little about:…
This week: political infighting about purple robes and what it can tell us about Buddhism, political power, and the relationship…
This week, we’re wrapping up our look at Sakamoto Ryoma’s life and legacy to see how he was transformed from…
This week, we return to the turbulent age of the Bakumatsu–the collapse of the Tokugawa state–with a biography of one…
This week: just what sort of scandal sent Nakanoin Nakako to the far end of Japan, and how did fate…
Our final episode of this miniseries will detail the early decades of the Christian persecutions in Nagasaki. Once the religion…