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?

Show notes here. 

This week on the podcast: Miyazaki Manabu faces his first battle as a college activist with the administration of his own school at Waseda University. It...does not go well.

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...

Show notes here. 

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.

Show notes here. 

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?

Show notes here.

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.

Show notes here.

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?

Show notes here. 

This week: the first of three episodes on urban rioting in Tokugawa period Japan. This week, we're covering the first two urban riots in the history of the shogun's capital city. What drove the people of Edo to riot, and how did the shogunate respond to those challenges to its authority?

Show notes here. 

In the final episode of this series: how did "otaku culture" spread overseas when it was so stigmatized at home, and what can all this tell us about Japan in the post-bubble era?

Show notes here. 

For our first episode of 2025: "otaku culture" as a phenomenon began to emerge, in part, as a reaction against the crass commercialism of postwar Japan. Yet now, it is entirely a part of the fabric of that commercialism. How did that happen? We'll explore it by looking at two fascinating phenomena: the dojin market known as Comiket and the transformation of Tokyo's neighborhood of Akihabara.

Show notes here.