History of Japan Isaac Meyer

This week: how did Japan's most popular god develop a following around the country, and why is that god--Inari--associated with everything from farming to fire prevention? How come you see Inari worship in Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines alike? And what does all of this have to do with foxes, anyway?
Show notes here. 

This week: the Pal dissent becomes the Pal myth. How did an obscure document from the Tokyo Trials end up front and center in nationalist discourse in Japan today?
Show notes here.

This week, we're starting a look into how an Indian lawyer and judge from a relatively obscure background became a focal point of right-wing Japanese nationalism. Who was Radhabinod Pal, how did he end up a judge in the Tokyo Trials, and what led him to claim that there were no grounds to convict Japan's leaders of any crime after World War II?
Note: this episode does contain indirect discussion of war crimes. Listener discretion is advised. 
Show notes here.
 

Oe Kenzaburo is about as different a writer as you can think of from Kawabata Yasunari, and yet he's Japan's second ever Nobel laureate in literature. What sort of concerns defined his work, and what can we learn from looking at him in conjunction with Kawabata?
Show notes here.

Apologies for the delay, folks. Something went wrong in the Libsyn backend. Here's our episode on Kawabata Yasunari!

We're wrapping up our look at the Hatoyama political dynasty with some time on Hatoyama Iichiro (arguably Japan's most reluctant politican) and his two sons Kunio and Yukio. Plus some thoughts on the legacy of the Hatoyama family and on dynastic electoral politics more generally.
Show notes here.