History of Japan

Latest Episodes:

Episode 646 - A Fief By Any Other Name, Part 1 Oct 23, 2026

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What is feudalism? It's a surprisingly hard question to answer, and one that raises an interesting follow up. Here on the podcast I've been describing medieval Japan as a "feudal state" for a long time, but should I even be doing that?

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Episode 645 - The Forgotten Radicals, Part 3 Oct 16, 2026

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This week: the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front publishes its manifesto, and spreads beyond its original four members. But after a few months of terror bombings (and one completely botched attempt to assassinate Hirohito), the group is brought low and its members--with a few exceptions--end up in prison. That story today, plus a question: in the end, what did all this actually accomplish? Show notes here.

Episode 644 - The Forgotten Radicals, Part 2 Oct 09, 2026

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Daidoji Masashi's trajectory from college student to terrorist has a lot to do with the student movement and the New Left in 1960s Tokyo. How did his time at Hōsei University set the idealistic young man on a collision course with the ideologies of "anti-Japanism", and from there to embracing violence as a tool of politics?

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Episode 643 - The Forgotten Radicals, Part 1 Oct 02, 2026

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On August 30, 1974, a bomb went off at Mitsubishi corporate HQ in Tokyo's Marunouchi neighborhood. The culprit was a group calling itself the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front - Wolf Cell. This week: how did this radical movement grow out of Japan's 1960s, and what does it have to do with the wider political phenomenon known as the New Left?

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Announcment - No episode this week Sep 21, 2026

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Heads up folks: no new episode this week. I came down with a pretty bad bug and it's put me very behind on production, plus my voice is a bit shot. I'll see you all next week.

Episode 642 - The Hunters, Part 2 Sep 18, 2026

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How does a matagi hunt actually work, and how has matagi culture evolved over the course of the 20th century? And finally: why is it that so many today seem to think the matagi will be extinct themselves before too long?

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Episode 641 - The Hunters, Part 1 Sep 11, 2026

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Not many have heard of the Matagi, the hunters who live in northern Honshu. What do we know of their origins and history, and how do they fit into our knowledge of premodern Japan?

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Episode 640 - The Great Escape, Part 2 Sep 04, 2026

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This week: the Cowra breakout seemed, to those who lived through it, like it came out of nowhere. But nothing does, so what factors led to it? How did the breakout itself play out? And what are its legacies, both in terms of Australia-Japan relations and the wider question of Japanese "fanaticism" in WWII?

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Episode 639 - The Great Escape, Part 1 Aug 28, 2026

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In a wide-ranging episode intended just to be the introduction to the largest mass prisoner breakout of WWII, we first have to tackle...the history of Japan-Australia relations all the way up to 1940 and the role Australia played in Japanese militarist thought. Show notes here.

Episode 638 - The Catastrophe, Part 6 Aug 21, 2026

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At long last, the fight over how to reconstruct Tokyo is done. But what did rebuilding the imperial capital actually look like?

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