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

Audible has over 425,000 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's subscription offers. Go to audibletrial.com slash Japan to claim

your offer. This week, I'm going to recommend World War Z by Max Brooks. Need something horrifying

to take your mind off the ongoing global crisis?

Well, do I have a book for you?

Despite the somewhat goofy premise, this is actually, in my opinion, one of the best done

horror novels I've ever read in my life.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy.

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 33, the Ooku.

This week, I want to talk about an institution that came up last week in our discussion of the life of Lady Kasuga, and to give it a little more context and a bit more airtime. It's one of the more well-known institutions of the Tokugawa

government, I imagine, but also one that tends to be wrapped in an aura of scandal and titillation.

I am talking, of course, about the Olku, the Great Interior, or the Shogun's

harem. Now, this term, harem, is, I think, the first place where misunderstandings creep in,

because that word itself in English is derived from Arabic, and our vision of what it means

is filtered through hundreds of years of weirdly

exoticized thinking about the Middle East.

But of course, as the observant among you have likely already noticed, Japan is not in the Middle

East, nor is the dominant language there Arabic.

The term in English conjures to mind

...