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 Born a Crime, Stories from a South

African childhood by Trevor Noah.

I'll admit to being one of those people who didn't love Trevor Noah when he took over the Daily Show, but I do think he's really started to grow into the role, and this is a very

memorable story told incredibly well. If you're looking for a mix of comedy and, I guess, poignancy would be the word

in documenting life in late apartheid South Africa, you can't really do better than this.

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

Thank you. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 343, Blackness in Japan, Part 1.

So given just everything that's been going on in the United States, I've decided to throw my schedule up in the air and rework it to focus on a topic that feels very

pressing in the current moment, black history in Japan, because yes, there is black history

in Japan, there's black history everywhere.

I've thought for a long time about how to approach this. As a series of different episodes

or as one longer narrative,

I've decided to go with the latter approach. Hopefully you find it interesting.

So first, what do we know about relations between Africa and Asia more generally? Well,

scholars of Chinese history have suggested at least some form of exchange between

Eastern and Northern Africa and China, going as far back as the Han Dynasty, roughly contemporary

with the height of the Roman Empire.

...