History of Japan

Latest Episodes:

Episode 393 - The Lords of the Sea, Part 4 Jun 04, 2021

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This week, we're wrapping up our month on piracy by looking at how the image of "Japanese pirates" became so prevalent in Korea and China, and what we actually know about all the pirating that was going on during this time.

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Episode 392 - The Lords of the Sea, Part 3 May 28, 2021

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This week, we're talking about how Hideyoshi finally tamed Japan's pirates, and why that makes them so hard to understand from a historical perspective.

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Episode 391 - The Lords of the Sea, Part 2 May 21, 2021

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This week, we're focusing on the height of piracy during the civil wars in Japan, and in particular the powerful Murakami pirate families. How did these families make their money? What did their raids look like? And what was their relationship to the warlords on land?

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Episode 390 - Lords of the Sea, Part 1 May 14, 2021

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This week, in the first of a four part series on piracy in Japan, we're covering the background of piracy before the Sengoku civil wars. How did Japan's pirates interact with the complexities of Japan's classical and medieval world?

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Episode 389 - The Very Lost Tribes May 07, 2021

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This week we're going deep into the bizarre theories of Japanese Israelism: the conspiracy theory that modern Japanese people are descended in whole or part from the same ancestors as Jews. I'll take you through the basics of these theories, with plenty of barely hidden scorn for their idiocy to light our shared way.

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Episode 388 - The First of Us Apr 30, 2021

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We're trapped in a loop this week as Isaac talks about another Isaac: specifically, Isaac Titsingh, a member of the Dutch trade station at Nagasaki and one of the famous European interpreters of Japanese history and culture to the West.

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Episode 387 - The Iron Road, Part 4 Apr 23, 2021

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For our final episode in the series, we're taking a look at the demise of public rail in Japan and the privatization of JNR. What led one of Japan's biggest companies down the track (ha!) of being broken up, and where does that leave Japan's rail network today?

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Episode 386 - The Iron Road, Part 3 Apr 16, 2021

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This week, we're talking about the rebirth of Japan's rail network in the form of Japan National Railways. Some things will stay the same (it's all the same guys in charge), some will change (a free press keeps reporting on the mistakes those guys make), and all of this will culminate in one of the most ambitious engineering projects in Japanese history: the Tokaido Shinkansen.

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Episode 385 - The Iron Road, Part 2 Apr 09, 2021

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This week, we're talking about the role of rail in imperial Japan, with a particular focus on the infamous South Manchuria Railway Company. How does a rail line become key to Japan's imperial ambitions in China?

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Episode 384 - The Iron Road, Part 1 Apr 02, 2021

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This week, we're starting off a look at the history of rail in Japan by exploring how this revolutionary technology was introduced to the country. And once it was, how would a government obsessed with strategic infrastructure like rail manage the complexities of funding and constructing something so jaw-droppingly expensive?

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