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Dec 6, 2024

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?

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Nov 22, 2024

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?

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Nov 15, 2024

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...


Nov 8, 2024

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?

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Nov 1, 2024

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. 

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