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This week, I'm going to recommend food, a cultural culinary history, part of the Great Courses series by Professor Kanalbala.

Maybe I'm just saying this because I'm recording before lunch, but to my mind, there's definitely something to the idea that you can learn a lot about a culture from what the people in it eat.

Go to audiblechild.com slash Japan to claim your copy.

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast.

Episode 165, The Mailstrom, Part 3.

So I'm back having survived my first two weeks of work.

Things are going pretty well so far, though I did pick up a cold on the school camping trip, so if my voice sounds a little strange, that's why. And today,

we're going to cover the negotiations leading up to the outbreak of war between Russia and Japan,

because both sides were, more or less from the time of the Boxer Rebellion and the subsequent Russian occupation of Manchuria,

convinced that war was going to happen, but had to keep up appearances and make it look like they wished to avoid any conflict.

Both Russia and Japan would need, if not outright, allies at least other major powers friendly to

their cause in order to successfully run a war effort.

That meant showing at least some concern for how their actions played with other big states,

in other words, managing image control.

However, we're not going to spend that much time on a negotiations because the Russians were

...