Facing Backward Podcasts

For our final episode of this miniseries: Miyazaki Manabu faces down with the National Police Agency as he finds himself the prime suspect in Japan’s highest profile criminal case of the 1980s. After he comes out on top, where does he go next? Why, the natural place for any high profile criminal suspect: into media, and then politics!

Show notes here.

Sources

Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.

Miyazaki’s interview with the Financial Times about his experience being a suspect in the Glico-Morinaga case.

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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 postwar history.

Sources

Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.

Ivy, Marilyn. “Tracking the Mystery Man with the 21 Faces.” Critical Inquiry 23, No 1 (Autumn, 1996)

Some original NYT coverage of the Glico Morinaga case.

An article by the Japan Times on the occasion of the final expiration of the statutes of limitations as they relate to the case.

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This week: Miyazaki Manabu’s dramatic departure from the Communist Party, as his faith in the revolution wanes. What does a wannabe college revolutionary with no prospects turn to when the revolution fails to materialize?

Sources

Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.

Yoshikuni, Igarashi. Japan 1972: Visions of Masculinity in an Age of Consumerism

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This week: Miyazaki Manabu goes from the Sodai struggle at Waseda to an active participant in the violent clashes of the late 1960s student movement, as a part of the “action corps” of the Communist Party. We’ll take an up close and personal look to see: what was it like to be a radical student in the 1960s?

Sources

Andrews, William. Dissenting Japan: A History of Japanese Radicalism and Counterculture from 1945 to Fukushima.

Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.

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This week: Miyazaki Manabu completes his transformation from son of a yakuza boss to a committed member of the Communist party. After all, it turns out those two groups have a surprising amount in common…

Sources

Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.

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This week: the start of a multi-part “modernized biography” intended to help us explore postwar Japan through the lens of a single, fascinating life. This episode is mostly focused on introducing our subject–Miyazaki Manabu–and his unique and fascinating circumstances as the scion of a small yakuza family.

Sources

Miyazaki, Manabu. Toppamono: Outlaw,, Radical, Suspect. My Life in Japan’s Underworld. Trans. Robert Whiting.

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This week: what do we know about women and the wrong end of the law during the Tokugawa Period? Given the male-dominated nature of the feudal social order and the historical written record, what can we figure out? And what are the limits of that knowledge?

Sources

Walthall, Anne. “Devoted Wives/Unruly Women: Invisible Presence in the History of Japanese Social Protest.” Signs 20, no. 1 (1994)

Bix, Herbert P. “Miura Meisuke, or Peasant Rebellion under the Banner of ‘Distress'”. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 10, No 2 (2019)

This week: outside of big urban riots, how did violence figure into the daily life of the Edo period? To answer this question, we’ll take a look at one particularly well-documented example: youth gangs in the area surrounding Sensoji in the shogun’s capital of Edo.

Sources

Takeuchi, Makoto, “Festivals and Fights: The Law and the People of Edo” and Anne Walthall, “Edo Riots” in Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era. Eds. James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru.

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This week, we cover the second and third of Edo’s three great riots in 1787 and 1866. How did samurai and commoners talk about these acts of mass violence? How was all this a manifestation of a sense of “street justice” among the masses? And what’s with the handsome young guy everyone keeps swearing was secretly behind the whole thing?

Sources

Takeuchi, Makoto, “Festivals and Fights: The Law and the People of Edo” and Anne Walthall, “Edo Riots” in Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early Modern Era. Eds. James L. McClain, John M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru.

Walthall, Anne. “Devoted Wives/Unruly Women: Invisible Presence in the History of Japanese Social Protest.” Signs 20, no. 1 (1994)

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