This week, we're tackling the history of kamishibai, a form of street theater that was once big business but has since faded into obscurity. Where did it come from, and why--after it was killed off by TV and movies--is it worth remembering today?

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Thank you all to every single one of you who has ever listened to this podcast.

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This week: how did three soldiers who managed to do something rather unexceptional--dying in Japan's battles in China--manage to become the centerpiece of a state-run cult of heroism?

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This week, we're talking about a pair of anchors in a Chinese museum and the tortured path they took to get there. What do the anchors have to do with a "correct" (from the view of the Chinese Communist Party) understanding of history--and how does Japan fit into that story?

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This week, we're traveling the breadth of Japanese history to answer a seemingly simple question: why is it that so very many of us have heard of haiku? What is so special about this style of poetry, and how did it come to have such global appeal?

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This week, we're covering the transformation of the collapsed LTCB into the revived Shinsei ("New Life") Bank, and the motley cast of American investors and Japanese executives who made this once unthinkable financial future a reality. What led to decades of fiscal tradition being scrapped, and what have the impacts of this choice been?

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This week: a combination of political scandals, tabloid journalism, institutional inertia, and of course the goddamn Swiss lead to the long, slow, death of LTCB.

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This week, we're returning to the era of the bubble economy and its aftermath with an up close look at the failure of one of Japan's most prominent banks: the Long Term Credit Bank of Japan, or LTCB. First: how did LTCB dig itself so deeply into an economic hole?

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This week, we're wrapping up our month on piracy by looking at how the image of "Japanese pirates" became so prevalent in Korea and China, and what we actually know about all the pirating that was going on during this time.

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This week, we're talking about how Hideyoshi finally tamed Japan's pirates, and why that makes them so hard to understand from a historical perspective.

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