Before we get into this week's episode, just another reminder of the upcoming Intelligent Speech

which will be taking place on April 24th.

I'm very excited to be speaking this year, actually just before recording I was on a call doing training with some of the other presenters,

and it really reinforced my opinion of what a fantastic group of podcasters

we've brought together for this year's conference.

If you're at all curious to hear us talk, go to intelligent speechconference.com to see

the speakers, the schedule, and to take a look at ticket prices.

I look forward to seeing you all there.

Thank you. to take a look at ticket prices. I look forward to seeing you all there. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 386, The Iron Road, part three.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who ends up seriously studying modern

Japanese history must be in want of a chance to read Mity and the Japanese miracle.

If you're not familiar with Chalmers Johnson's seminal work on Japanese bureaucracy, it is, well, complicated.

I had to read it for the first time in my field course on modern Japan.

Essentially, this is the PhD class that introduces you to

some of the major books in the field you're studying. And, oh Lord, even in a class full of some very

dense books, it was pretty dense. The book is centered, as the name might clue you onto, on

Miti, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry,

Once Upon a Time, one of the most powerful bureaucracies in Japan, and arguably anywhere.

But really, in a sense, the book is about bureaucracy in Japan more generally.

Miti just happens to be the focus.

And one of the arguments Johnson advances, one of Minis, and it's a 300-page book,

and again, very dense, is that when we think about the history of bureaucracy in Japan, we

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