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This week, I'm going to recommend China and Japan facing history by the late and great Ezra Vogel.

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Thank you. audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 371, The First Frontier, Part 1.

This week, I want to return to an approach we've tried before, and that I, and apparently quite a few of you, really like.

And that approach is to tell the story not of a person or an institution or a phenomenon, but

of a place, the history of one of Japan's many regions.

In this instance, I spent a lot of time thinking about where I wanted to take us next, but ultimately

there was one idea I just kept coming back to, so this week we're starting a history of Japan's

first modern frontier, Hokkaido.

This is a story I want to tell for two reasons. First, as that whole first frontier title

thing might clue you on to, Hokkaido is very important to the history of Japan's overseas

empire. We think of the island today as an intrinsic part of

Japan, but it was not always so. For the vast majority of Japanese history, the island was only

loosely tied, if at all, to Japan proper. The successful colonization of Hokkaido and its

complete incorporation into Japan would set the stage in a lot

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