Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 493, Wired Up.

Japan's forceful opening took place at a somewhat fateful time in the history of humanity.

The collapse of feudalism and the emergence of a modern imperial nation-state occurred against

the backdrop of 19th century industrialization, which has, of course, fundamentally

remade the way we as a species live, thanks to the magic of industrial technology and to the

perils it can create. But of course, the industrial world is not just about factories, and for the next

few weeks, I want to focus on one aspect of that shifting

way of modern living, the technology of communication. This is, of course, a very important

field. After all, those technologies are the reason you can be listening to my voice anywhere

in the world in your magic glowing rectangle of choice.

But even before the internet, these technologies were essential for binding ever more complex

societies together and shaped what those societies looked like.

And that in turn is a really important idea for us to think about.

If you've ever taken, well, basically any course in political

theory or modern history or anything like that, you've probably been exposed to the ideas of

one Benedict Anderson. We've certainly talked about him before. For a quick refresh, Anderson was

an academic most famous for his study of modern nationalism entitled

imagined communities.

Anderson's basic thesis is actually all about the role of technology, particularly in his

case print media and the way in which it helped tie people who realistically would never

meet each other in their lives together into a single national community

by allowing them to share a single common narrative about their world.

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