In this episode, Dr. Masao Nakamura (UBC) discloses the impacts of the Meiji Period on Japanese business and financial practices, investing importance in the close relationship between the state and the public sector.  We discuss how the Restoration affected family-based merchant firms like Mitsui and Sumitomo, question the success of Meiji "big push" economic policies, locate the origins of prewar Zaibatsu in Meiji-era financial practices, and speculate on the problems facing Japanese commerce today. (Transcript here).

In this episode, Dr. Hardacre recenters religion in Japanese society in the Tokugawa and Meiji periods, laying the pre-1868 groundwork for the embracing of kami-workship after the Restoration and tracing the importance of religion in everyday life.  We also discuss the meaning of Meiji at 150 along with future directions for the study of the Meiji Period. (Transcript here).

In this episode, Dr. Richard John Lynn reviews Japanese relations with China during the Meiji Period through the person of Chinese poet and diplomat Huang Zunxian.  We discuss the Kanji culture of East Asian diplomacy and Sino-Japanese literary circles, changing Chinese views of the Meiji Restoration and Meiji-era progress, the possibility of a "Meiji model" for Chinese reform, and the retention of tradition in the face of modernization in both countries.

In this episode, Dr. Lisa Yoshikawa chronicles how professional historians in the Meiji and Taisho Periods legitimized imperialism as they attempted to elevate the discipline of history within Japanese academia.  We discuss the mobilization of history and myth to justify colonialism, the development of academic history in the Meiji period, and scholars' complicity with interwar illiberalism before considering the politics of historical memory along with legacies for Japanese historians and historiographies in the postwar and today. (Transcript here).

In this episode, Dr. Trent Maxey proclaims the history of early Meiji Government policies regarding religion in the context of national unification.  We discuss the secularity of the Meiji state, the origins of State Shinto, reactions to "Hidden" Christians in the early Meiji Period, and anti-foreignism in the Tokugawa and Meiji periods before talking about Dr. Maxey's more recent work on automobiles in Tokyo.

In the Meiji at 150 Student Podcast, UBC students discuss aspects of Japanese culture they research in class.  In this episode, two students travel the Tōkaidō Road between Kyōto and Edo during the Tokugawa Period, stopping along the way at several towns, rest stops, and post stations.

In the Meiji at 150 Student Podcast, UBC students discuss aspects of Japanese culture they research in class.  In this episode, a group of students lead a tour of towns, rest stops, and post stations along the Tōkaidō Road between Kyōto and Edo during the Tokugawa Period.

In this episode, Dr. Rebecca Corbett (USC) infuses tea into the history of the Meiji Restoration, noting links between tea practice and the cultivation of femininity in the Edo and Meiji periods.  We discuss changes in tea practice over the Edo and Meiji periods, the association of tea with Japanese "tradition," and dilute essentialist ideas of the "Japanese-ness" of tea ceremony. 

In the Meiji at 150 Student Podcast, UBC students discuss aspects of Japanese culture they research in class.  In this episode, two students introduce research they conducted on a Japanese-owned business damaged in the 1907 Vancouver Anti-Asian riots. 

In the Meiji at 150 Student Podcast, UBC students discuss aspects of Japanese culture they research in class.  In this episode, a student introduces research she conducted on a Japanese-owned business damaged in the 1907 Vancouver Anti-Asian riots.