This week's episode is brought to you by Audible.

Audible has over 180,000 titles to choose from, all compatible with iPhone, Android,

Kindle, or your MP3 player of choice.

For listeners of the show, Audible is offering a free 30-day trial membership, complete with

credit for a free audiobook of your choice.

You can cancel any time and keep the free book

or keep going with one of audible subscription offers. Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your offer.

This week, I'm going to recommend Nothing to Envy by Barbara D' Mick. A haunting look at the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea, with a particular focus

on the dark years of the 1990s, nothing to envy is a great introduction to one of the most

horrifically fascinating regimes on Earth.

I use it in my own 12th grade classes as our basic textbook on North Korea, but I also recommend it to regular people as an interesting and disturbing look at the world's only Stalinist Neo-Confusion dictatorship.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. You know, Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 198, Fist of Legend, Part 5.

World War II and the militarization of the Bhutoku Kai provide a nice breaking point in our story,

one that fits well for telling some stories that don't mesh cleanly with the earlier parts of this

narrative before we move on to the post-war era. So today I want to tackle two styles of Japanese Budo that traced their roots back to this time period,

but which I haven't fit well into our story up until this point.

One of these styles has gone on to flourish worldwide.

The second remains a bit niche.

However, both are representative of some interesting changes in the nature of

Budo during the 20th century. Our first story begins in 1883, in what is now the town of Tanabe

in Wakayama Prefecture. W Wakayama is an interesting place.

It's tucked away on the Key Peninsula to the south of Kyoto and Osaka.

...