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 Pachinko by Minjin-Lee.

This is, I think, one of the best historical novels I've ever read.

It follows the tale of one Korean family through several generations,

as they leave Korea during the early days of Japanese imperialism

and make a new home for themselves in Japan, doing what else, but running a Pachinko parlor.

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

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 339, wedding bells.

This is another listener requested topic, and normally they go into a topic list that I pull from in order,

as I check to see if there's enough material to actually build a decent episode out of.

But I really liked this idea so much that I ended up looking into it right away,

and came away convinced that it would make for a pretty interesting episode.

Plus, it's a nice change of pace from all that abstract politics that defines talking about the Olympics.

And so, and so, marriage is what brings us together today.

And if you don't get that reference, your homework after this episode is to go watch the Princess Bride.

So if we're going to do an episode on the history of marriage as an institution in Japan, which we are, if my referential humor obscured the point, the place we have to start is

the Heian period.

There's just not enough documentation from earlier eras of Japanese history to really say how the institution functioned at those points.

...