History of Japan

After Tokyo was burned to the ground, the battle over how to rebuild it began almost immediately. The man leading the charge--one of Japan's foremost bureaucrats--would become so frustrated with the experience that it would crush him completely. In the process, the fight would reveal some deep divisions over the importance of the capital and the nature of the postwar state it...

Why did so many greet the destruction of Tokyo not with consternation, but seeming joy? The answer has to do with one of the most complex phenomenon in the history of modern urbanism, and with the history of Edo's transformation into Tokyo and all the modern vices that came with it.

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This week: the Great Kanto Earthquake was also the backdrop for one of the most famous murders of 1920s Japan, one that set the stage for a seismic shift within the nation's political sphere. This week: who was Ito Noe, and how did her murder in a time of national emergency reflect a shift in Japan's political discourse?

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This week: in the aftermath of the Great Kanto Earthquake, thousands of Koreans living in Tokyo were massacred by angry mobs as well as policemen and soldiers. What animated the survivors to engage in such horrific violence, and how does it reflect both the wider history of the Japan-Korea relationship and the mindset many of us carry into our darkest moments?

Note: no...

The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 was one of the most devastating catastrophes in modern Japanese history, but in English scholarship it's often overshadowed by the destruction of the Second World War. This week we'll kick off a multipart series on the quake and its legacy with a simple question: what do we know about the immediate aftermath?

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