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Jan 12, 2024

This week: the dramatic career of Emperor Go-Daigo, who brought down the Kamakura shogunate and ended Hojo rule in Japan. This despite the fact that just a few months before victory, his forces were on the verge of defeat!

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Dec 15, 2023

This week: the advent of the medieval era brings with it new strands of Buddhism that will radically remake the image of the religion from an aristocratic faith to a distinctly Japanese one. So, how do the wildly different beliefs of Zen, Pure Land, and Nichiren Buddhism all grow out of the same moment in...


Dec 1, 2023

This week, we're covering the beginnings of the rise of the samurai class by looking at the wars of the 1000s, as well as the Hogen and Heiji conflicts which secured the role of the military class in national politics.

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Sep 29, 2023

For part 2 of our Revised Introduction to Japanese History: what do we know about the origins of Japan's imperial family? And how does that knowledge line up with the mythology built around the family's rise?

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Sep 15, 2023

This week, it's a listener question episode! Let's talk about the topics I'd like to cover, a D&D party made of Japanese prime ministers, the future of the show, and more.

Transcript and show notes at this link

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