History of Japan

For our first episode of 2025: "otaku culture" as a phenomenon began to emerge, in part, as a reaction against the crass commercialism of postwar Japan. Yet now, it is entirely a part of the fabric of that commercialism. How did that happen? We'll explore it by looking at two fascinating phenomena: the dojin market known as Comiket and the transformation of Tokyo's neighborhood of Akihabara. Show...

Our last episode of 2024 is also the first episode in a series on one of Japan's most distinctive cultural phenomenons: otaku culture. This week: is the idea of being an "otaku" older than we think?  Show notes here . 

This week, the story of an Edo period writer whose primary claim to fame was producing decent ripoffs of people far more famous and talented than him. What does a career like that tell us about the book market in premodern Japan--and more importantly about what we as people tend to look for in the things we read? Show notes here .

This week: Taiwan was the first overseas territory annexed by Japan with a large existing population. So how did the government's policies on religion--and especially Shinto--help shape the nature of Japanese colonial rule there? And how did those policies evolve as Taiwan's own place in the empire changed? Show notes here . 

This week: how does the history of Shinto intersect with the colonization of Hokkaido? What role does Shinto's transition from religion to "cultural institution" play in the process that has made that island indisputably a part of Japan itself? Show notes here . 

What even is religion, when you get down to it? Why do we treat religion the way that we do? And when our modern notions of religion came up against an empire whose very legitimacy was based on a religious myth, how did those tensions play out? Show notes here . 

This week is a continuation of our exploration of the history of reiki. How did Takata Hawayo, a poor woman from Hawaii's Nikkei community, become the foundational figure of one of the most popular New Age practices in the world? And in the end, what sense can we make of the history of a practice founded on pseudoscientific medical claims? Show notes here . 

This week: the origins of one of the most popular pseudo-medical traditions out there. Where does reiki, the notion that one can manipulate energy in the human body using their hands to heal people, come from? And why does studying the history of practices like this matter? Show notes here .

This week: what can we learn about the past if we look not at elite literature, but at the lowbrow faire of the masses? We'll explore this question using one of the most popular works of its day: Tokaidochu Hizakurige.  Show notes here . 

This week, we conclude our look at canine history in Japan with the nation's most famous dog: Hachiko. You might know the story, but you probably don't know how tied up it is in the establishment of Japan's first dog breeding programs, or in the militarist rhetoric of the war years. Show notes here . 

This week we continue our footnote on the history of dogs in Japan. How did  public perceptions of dogs change during the Meiji period? How did the adoption of modern notions of dog ownership and pet keeping help remake Japan's cities? And what impact did all of this have on Japan's existing canine population? Show notes here .  

In the final footnote for our Revised Introduction, we turn our attention to a little discussed subject that is a part of daily life for many: the history of our life with dogs! How did humans live with dogs in premodern Japan, and how did that start to change when the country was opened during the Meiji years? Show notes here . 

This week's footnote is a continuation of last week's discussion of the  gozan , or five mountain system for the ranking of Zen temples. What did the system look like at its height under Ashikaga rule, and how did its relationship to the Ashikaga begin to transform the practice of Zen within the temples themselves? Show notes here . 

This week on the Footnotes to the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: many describe Zen as the religion of the samurai. In reality, it was not--but samurai influence was crucial to making Zen a part of Japan's cultural framework. That history is bound up in a system called the "Five Mountains"; so how did that system come to be? Show notes here . 

This week, we're continuing last week's footnote on the postwar ultraright. How did the fall of the Soviet Union affect the anti-communist focus of the extreme right? How has its rhetoric been shaped by an odd relationship with the left? And how does modern extreme rightism manifest in the ideas of men like Kobayashi Yoshinori and groups like Nippon Kaigi? Show notes here .

This week's footnote: the first of two parts on the postwar extreme right. This week, we're mostly focusing on the extreme right in the first few decades of the Cold War, and in particular on the story of Akao Bin and his Aikokuto. How did a convicted socialist end up as one of Japan's foremost violent anticommunists--and how did his ideas shape a new reality for the postwar right? Show notes here...

This week, we're continuing last week's footnote on daily life in Meiji Japan. Topics covered this week include life as a conscript in the army, changes to Japanese cuisine during the Meiji years, and entertainment from kabuki to early movies. Show notes here . 

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History Footnotes: what was it like to live in the Meiji Era? Join us on a journey through a day in 1900, as we discuss breakfast foods, education, and factory jobs in the "new Japan." Show notes here .

For our second footnote to the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: a simple question that definitely won't result in an overpacked episode. Was Imperial Japan a fascist state? How can we even define fascism in a productive way that lets us engage in historical comparison? How quickly can I summarize four different definitions of what fascism is? Should be easy enough. Show notes here .

This week, we have our first Footnote to the Revised Introduction to Japanese history, expanding on questions we didn't get to touch on during the main series. This week, our question is: what do we know about the origins and practice of early Japanese religion, and how does it relate to what we call Shinto today? Show notes here .  

On the final episode of the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the LDP completely fails to meet the challenge of the bubble collapse, and the Lost Decades see Japan's economy stagnate and its political and social system under severe pressure. Where to from here? Only time will tell. Show notes here . 

In the penultimate episode of the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the 1980s sees the rise of Japan's asset bubble and the peak of the high-rollin' postwar. But the new prosperity is built on faulty ground that is already beginning to creak... Show notes here .

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: how did Ikeda Hayato and the LDP build a system that would redefine postwar Japan? And how did the political opposition utterly fail to rise to the challenge of matching them? Show notes here . 

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: the Occupation comes to an end, but what happens next? This week is all about the 1950s, when clashing visions of Japan's future would culminate in one of the largest protests in the nation's history, laying the groundwork for the political world that has existed ever since. Show notes here .

This week on the Revised Introduction to Japanese History: The US Occupation of Japan after World War II represented a truly massive undertaking. American military and civilian personnel spent just over a decade rebuilding Japan's government, economy, and society from the ground up. What did that look like in practice, and how does the legacy of the Occupation era remain with Japan today? Show not...