Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 400, the 400th episode.

I always feel like I'm being a bit trite saying this, but let me start things off by simply saying thank you to every single one of you.

The past year has been incredibly challenging for me in a lot of ways, working as a teacher during a really difficult time,

be kind to the teachers in your life, everyone, and just dealing with, well, everything.

I want all of you to know that I read every piece of fan mail and every wonderful comment and message,

and even if I'm not great about responding all the time,

sorry about that, they really do mean the world to me.

And a special thank you to everyone who has donated or pledged money on Patreon to support

what is, ultimately, a free product.

Your incredible generosity does a lot to buoy my faith in humanity and uphold my belief in the importance

of accessible public history, including this project.

Also, just a quick call to action before we get started, as the world begins to reopen,

ever so slowly, do what you can to support your local educational institutions, from attending

lectures to visiting museums, to supporting

local bookshops. A lot of great businesses dedicated to important work have really struggled

over the past year, so please do what you can to help lift them up. All right, let's get this

show on the road, and just a quick note, for the first time ever, I got more questions than I could

really respond to in the span of a single episode.

If yours is not on here, that's because I thought it was good enough that it could potentially

be a full episode topic down the line.

So, let's do this thing.

First, I have a question from listener Tim.

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