Hello, the episode you're about to listen to is part of a multi-part series introducing an overview

of Japanese history.

This is a repeat of one of the original projects the History of Japan podcast was built on,

and is intended to serve as an update and supplement to these original works.

After 10 years, my hope is to return to this approach and to do it a little bit better,

given the skills that I have improved in the intervening years.

If you haven't been doing so already, you should listen to these episodes sequentially,

starting with episode 501.

Without any further ado, enjoy from Above.

We left off last time with the advent of the Pacific War, the destructive conflict between Japan and the Allies, most

prominently the United States. And just to be upfront, I do not plan to devote really any time

in this series to a discussion of that conflict in depth for a few reasons. First, it's one of the

most talked about wars in human history, so if you're interested in the Pacific War,

I don't think it's going to be hard to find material.

Second, there are a lot of famous events in that conflict to cover, and there's no way I could

get to them all, while keeping to my outline for this series, plus I've touched on quite a few

in particular already, which you can find in the back archive. In particular, I do think

the six-episode series on the Atomic Bomb, starting with episode 108, is one of the best things

I've done in terms of research, though the older stuff does tend to have some rough audio quality.

What can I say, academia doesn't do a great job preparing you for sound editing.

Finally, and this might seem a bit paradoxical given what I've just said, but in a certain sense,

there's actually not that much to talk about.

...