Episode 323 - Musui's Story

History of Japan

Isaac Meyer

Japan, History, Japanese

4.8 • 744 Ratings

🗓️ 31 January 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week, we're discussing the autobiography of a troublemaking, low-ranking samurai whose life didn't reshape Japan, but whose tale can tell us a lot about how our image of the samurai class matched up with reality.

Show notes here.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week's episode is brought to you by Audible.
0:03.2	Audible has over 425,000 titles to choose from, all compatible with iPhone, Android, Kindle, or your MP3 player of choice.
0:13.1	For listeners of the show, Audible is offering a free 30-day trial membership, complete with credit for a free audiobook of your choice.
0:20.4	You can cancel any time and keep the free book, or keep going with one of Audible's subscription
0:25.2	offers.
0:26.3	Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim your offer.
0:30.3	This week, I'm going to recommend The Party by Richard McGregor.
0:34.5	This is a fantastic look into the Chinese Communist Party and the extent to which it both
0:39.6	masks a lot of its influence over various sectors of Chinese society and maintains that same
0:46.2	influence and control while maintaining a perception of social openness.
0:52.2	McGregor's work is a little old by this point, but I think the ideas contained therein are
0:57.6	still very interesting, and I highly recommend it.
1:00.7	Go to audiblechild.com slash Japan to claim your copy.
1:09.8	Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 323, Musui's Story.
1:17.7	As I've mentioned before, one of my favorite things about history is recovering the individual human experiences of the past, at least as much as it's possible to do so.
1:28.2	Finding these moments of human connection to the past is wonderfully, well, humanizing, and I just
1:33.8	enjoy it so much.
1:35.9	When I think back to the early moments in my history education which stuck with me, it's pretty
1:41.0	uniformly one of those moments of connection across time.
1:44.7	For example, that's what really spoke to me about texts like The Pillow Book of
1:48.2	Seishonagon or as I crossed a bridge of dreams.
1:51.6	It's really remarkable to read something and connect with a person who lived a thousand years
	...

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