Podcast
History of Japan
Hosted by Isaac Meyer · EN
This podcast, assembled by a former PhD student in History at the University of Washington, covers the entire span of Japanese history. Each week we'll tackle a new topic, ranging from prehistoric Japan to the modern day.
36episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
Episode 626 - Flowering Fortunes, Part 1
1w ago00:33:36Tap to summarizeWe're starting a new series taking a look at an oft neglected classic of Heian literature: The Eiga Monogatari, or Tale of Flowering Fortunes, which tells the history of the great Fujiwara family at the height of its power. This week: what do we know about Eiga Monogatari and how it fits into the wider literary history of classical Japan? Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 625 - An Ocean Between Us, Part 3
2w ago00:36:00Tap to summarizeThis week: in 1988, a Japanese company bought a paper mill in Port Angeles, WA, in a story that basically nobody except one reporter from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer bothered to pay much attention to. But in fact, that story tells us a lot about US-Japan relations. Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 625 - An Ocean Between Us, Part 2
3w ago00:35:03Tap to summarizeThis week: rumors swirled around Port Angeles for decades after WWII that a Japanese man, Osasa Masaru, who had lived there from 1930-39 was in fact a Japanese spy who'd been sent to Port Angeles to report on the movements of the American Pacific Fleet. The reality is at once far more interesting and far more mundane. Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 624 - An Ocean Between Us, Part 1
4w ago00:34:55Tap to summarizeThis week: what role does a sleepy town in Washington's Olympic Peninsula play in Japan's history? Well, more than you'd think. We'll look at three different connections between Japan and Port Angeles over the next few weeks, starting with the story of some castaways who found themselves adrift nearby almost 200 years ago. Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 623 - The Great Peace, Part 2
Apr 1000:35:16Tap to summarizeThis week: how does the Taiheiki depict its most famous characters? How does it describe the downfall of the Hojo? And from that, what can we say about the charge that it's purely derivative from a more famous text? Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 622 - The Great Peace, Part 1
Apr 300:36:41Tap to summarizeThe Taiheiki is arguably one of the most dismissed works of literature in Japanese history, doomed to always exist solely in comparison to the far more highly regarded Heike Monogatari. But even so, there's a lot to draw the interest of the interested historian. So, what can we learn about medieval Japan from its most famously "eh" work of literature? Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 621 - The Manga Revolution, Part 3
Mar 2700:32:17Tap to summarizeThis week: the manga industry during World War II. Plus some thoughts on the development of shojo manga, and finally a look at Tezuka Osamu and the ways in which his work helped create the manga market that exists today. Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 620 - The Manga Revolution, Part 2
Mar 2000:32:09Tap to summarizeHistories of manga tend to skip from the colorful woodblocks of the Edo period directly to the post-WWII industry we'd recognize today. But what do we lose when we do that? And what do we gain when we do investigate the century or so that lies between those two moments? Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 619 - The Manga Revolution, Part 1
Mar 1300:33:54Tap to summarizeThis week: manga is today one of the most ubiquitous forms of entertainment in Japan. But the idea of comics as we might understand them has a much longer history. So how did we get from there to here--what, in other words, is the origin of Japanese manga/ We'll look today at the earliest known examples as we try to understand the origins of manga as a form. Show notes here.
Transcribe →Episode 618 - Live by the Sword
Mar 600:36:26Tap to summarizeThis week, we're tackling the most legendary samurai in Japanese history: Miyamoto Musashi. Why is he so famous, what do we actually know about him, and why is there such a big gap between the story most are familiar with and what our actual sources have to say? Show notes here.
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