May 2, 2025

This week: after Taiho, the floodgates open as more non-Japanese rikishi begin to enter the sport. One of them, Takamiyama, has a good but not great career. But two of the rikishi he recruits to train under him after retirement--Konishiki Yasokichi and Akebono Taro--will change sumo forever.

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Apr 25, 2025

This week: Taiho begins his grand sumo career, and quickly proves to be one of the best ever to do it. We'll use his career to discuss: what does greatness look like in a sport like sumo? What were the highlights of one of the greatest careers in sumo history? And what were the small number of cases...

Apr 4, 2025

In our penultimate episode for this miniseries: Miyazaki Manabu narrowly escapes doing prison time, only to end up back in the underworld first of Osaka, and then Tokyo. And from there, he ends up square in the crosshairs of the police once again--this time as a suspect in one of the most infamous criminal cases in...

Mar 13, 2025

This week on the podcast: Miyazaki Manabu faces his first battle as a college activist with the administration of his own school at Waseda University. It...does not go well.

Jan 24, 2025

This week: the first of three episodes on urban rioting in Tokugawa period Japan. This week, we're covering the first two urban riots in the history of the shogun's capital city. What drove the people of Edo to riot, and how did the shogunate respond to those challenges to its authority?

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