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This week I'm going to recommend Rubicon,

the triumph and tragedy of the Roman Republic, by Tom Holland.

Japan may be what I get paid for, but my first love was actually Roman history, and this is

an old favorite of mine.

It paints a tremendous picture of figures who still cast a wide shadow in Western history,

and as I'm writing my lectures for my survey course on the Roman Republic, this is the book I find

myself turning to more than any other for material.

Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 100, Tyco.

So no, this is not an interview episode. Owing to some technical issues I've had to push that back to next week, so next week will be the 101st episode, our first ever interview show, and episode 102, two weeks from now, will be the episode formerly known as the 100th episode, where I answer some questions from all of you.

Sorry for the delay, but fortunately I had a script scrolled away for a rainy day, and now we get a chance to use it.

So this week, we're going to head back to one of the final decades of medieval Japan to cover one of the most influential failures in Japanese history.

Now, I say he's a failure, but would that we could all fail so spectacularly.

When he died, he was the unquestioned master of the entire country.

Still, the future he aimed to build ended up not coming to pass, and indeed falling apart

pretty rapidly. This week, we're going to cover the life of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with an eye towards answering

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