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Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 257, The Bookseller.

This week, we're going to talk about a biography that was suggested to me first by a listener, someone I've enjoyed talking to and getting to know better.

Don't want to put your name out there without

permission, but you know who you are. Thanks for the idea. It's the life story of a man whose life

measured by traditional standards was not that exciting. He wasn't a great politician or a general

or a warlord or anything like that. He was instead a humble bookseller with a small publishing press.

But the books he sold, the things he published, and the friendships he cultivated along the way

make him, in my opinion, a very fascinating and important man.

Uchiyama Kanza was born in rural Japan in 1885, in the small town of Shitsky in Okayama

Prefecture on Honshu.

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