Facing Backward Podcasts

This week, we’re starting a new miniseries focused on the life of Kawai Koume, a samurai woman living in Wakayama in the early 1800s. Today is going to be all about framing her life–what do we know about her upbringing, and about the city she grew up in during the twilight years of Japanese feudalism?

Sources

Partner, Simon. Koume’s World: The Life and Work of a Samurai Woman Before and After the Meiji Restoration

Jansen, Marius. The Making of Modern Japan

Images

This week, we wrap up our series on Hiroshige with a few lingering questions about his career. How much does his “artistic borrowing” really matter? What’s his relationship to Hiroshiges II and III? What about his second marriage and daughter? And ultimately, what makes him so damn famous–and what can we learn from that?

Sources

Haft, Alfred. Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road

Forer, Matthi. Hiroshige

A great article on the relationship between van Gogh and Hiroshige specifically

Images

This week, we’re covering Hiroshige’s emergence as an artist, which took 20 years after he finished his apprenticeship in the Utagawa school. Why the long gap? And what changed to finally allow him to break out artistically?

Sources

Haft, Alfred. Hiroshige: Artist of the Open Road

Forer, Matthi. Hiroshige

Images

This week on the podcast, something completely different! I’m getting some help talking about poetry from Mike Freiling, whose new translation of Hyakunin Isshu, entitled One Hundred Poems of Old Japan, will be out just a little over a week from now. We’ll talk tanka vs. haiku, how translation works, and share a few favorites from one of Japan’s most classic poetic compilations.

Sources

Freiling, Mike. One Hundred Poems of Old Japan: A New Translation of Hyakunin Isshu

The fine folks at Tuttle Publishing have made available recordings of all the poems both in translation and the original here!

Images

Our final episode in this miniseries brings conspiracism in Japan to the present day, as we discuss a wave of antisemitic conspiracy theorists from the 80s and 90s and the impact of the internet on conspiracism in Japan and around the world. Finally, we’ll look at how things stand today, and go over some final thoughts on conspiracism in general.

Sources

Dickey, Colin. Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

Hoborowicz, Marek. “The Faces of Japanese Anti-Semitism: ‘A bubble Anti-Semitism?'” Security Dimensions 22 (2017)

Ota, Koki, Masaki Chujyo, and Fujio Toriumi. “Pathways to Conspiracy Theorizing on YouTube in Japan.” Proceedings of the Nineteenth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 2025.

Cheng, John W. “Conspiracy Theories and their Believers in Contemporary Japan.” Bundezentrale fur politische Bildung, Nov 14, 2024\

Images

This week, we’re covering the postwar “Red Scare” in Japan, which has roots going back to the early 20th century but which was boosted during the postwar era by right-wing politicians and even members of the American occupation government. That conspiracy would, in turn, help shape both prewar and postwar politics on a profound level.

Sources

Kapur, Nick. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo

Szpilman, Christoper W. A. “Conservatism and its Enemies in Prewar Japan: The Case of Hiranuma Kiichiro and the Kokuhonsha.” Hitsotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 30 (December, 1998)

Briscoe, Charles H. “The May Day Riots.” Veritas 8, No 1, 2012

NYT Article from 1939 on Hiranuma’s ascension to Prime Minister.

Images

This week, conspiracism takes a new twist in Japan, from paranoid worries about Christianity to paranoid beliefs in “Western encirclement”. How did this new form of conspiracism help drive Japan’s descent into fascism, empire, and eventually the self-destructive decisions of the Second World War?

Sources

Duus, Peter. “The ‘Paranoid Style’ in Japanese Foreign Policy.” in Japan in the World, the World in Japan: Fifty Years of Japanese Studies at Michigan. 

Duus, Peter. The Japanese Discovery of America: A Brief History with Documents

Driscoll, Mark W. The Whites are the Enemies of Heaven: Climate Caucasianism and Asian Ecological Protection

Sinh, Vin. “Tokutomi Soho and Japan’s Imperial Destiny.” Journal of Japanese Trade and Industry vol 2 (June, 2002)

Images

This week, we explore the “Christian conspiracies” of Edo Period Japan. Working backwards from the Osaka Incident of 1827, when a group of supposed Christian spirit mediums were uncovered as a part of a fraud investigation, we’ll look at how Christianity was transformed from an actual religion into an evil spiritual threat to the foundations of Japan itself.

Sources

Leuchtenberger, Jan. Conquering Demons: The “Kirishitan”, Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japan

Miyazaki, Fumiko, Kate Wildman Nakai and Mark Teeuwen. Christian Sorcerers on Trial: Records of the 1827 Osaka Incident

Images

Japan’s “Christian Century” is the source of many fascinating aspects of Japanese history, from modern firearms to tenpura. But there’s one more way that the century from 1543-1639 shaped Japan–as the source of its first conspiracist moment!

Sources

Dickey, Colin. Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies: New One-Volume Edition

Hesselink, Reinier. The Dream of Christian Nagasaki: World Trade and the Clash of Cultures, 1560-1640

Leuchtenberger, Jan. Conquering Demons: the “Kirishitan”, Japan, and the World in Early Modern Japanese Literature

Images

This week, something a bit different: the start of a history of conspiracy theories in Japan. This first episode is mostly framing: what is conspiracism as a mindset, and how is it different from actual conspiracies?

Sources

Dickey, Colin. Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy

Popper, Karl. The Open Society and Its Enemies: New One-Volume Edition

Natalie Wynn (a.k.a. Contrapoints) on Conspiracy (Note: not suitable for minors or workplace environments!)

And now, the pile of sources I used to learn about YamatoQ….

A Houchi Shinbun article on Okazaki Jiro (father of YamatoQ founder Kuroda Hiroyuki) apologizing for his son’s behavior. (Japanese)

Asahi Shinbun coverage of YamatoQ, from the time of Kuroda’s sentencing in December, 2022 (Japanese)

Kyodo News coverage from the initial arrests (English)

Asia New Network coverage (pulled from The Japan News) shortly after the arrests (English)

Asahi Shinbun coverage of YamatoQ from May, 2023 (English)

A general overview of the history of conspiracism in Japan, from the Bundeszentrale fur politische Bildung (Federal Agency for Civic Education in Germany (English)

Images

<img decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-9920" data-tf-not-load src="https://isaacmeyer.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/welch_mccarthy_hearing_cc_img.avif" alt="" />