In this episode, Dr. Louise Young de-centers Japanese modernization during the Meiji Period by re-orienting our attention to Japan's peripheral "second cities," including Niigata, Okayama, Kanazawa, and Sapporo.  We discuss uneven power relations between the center and periphery, trace the circulation of ideas of urban life between domestic and colonial cities, and link imperialism to the rise of a culture of popular Japanese fascism in the 1930s before retracing historiographical shifts in scholarship on the Restoration. (Transcript here).