This week's episode is brought to you by...

Me!

That's right, instead of an ad for Audible this week, I wanted to talk to all of you about something else before we get started.

You see, I'm coming up on my general exams.

There'll be in Autumn this year.

And I'm looking at work prospects to fund myself while working through my dissertation.

State-funded universities are not exactly swimming in cash right now.

I'm looking into teaching, so if you or anyone you know is in that business, especially if

you teach at a high school where I don't need to spend another year getting certified just

to work there, please get in touch. I'd love to talk to you about it. This holds,

even if you're not in Washington, since I don't actually have to be here to complete my

dissertation, though it certainly would help. Thanks for listening, and now, back to your

regularly scheduled programming. Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, Episode 89, A Day in the Life of Meiji Japan.

This is one folks have been asking for for a while now, and I think it's well past time we took it on.

The Meiji period was one of the eras of greatest change in Japanese history, arguably the greatest.

The only real competition comes from the Chinese style reforms of the early Nara period,

and the early Edo reforms led by the Tokugawa.

Get-we, and I use that both in the sense of we on this podcast and we historians in general,

spend a great deal of time talking about high politics

rather than daily life when it comes to the Meiji period.

Now, high politics is very important, and looking back, I'd still defend focusing on it

first, but that's no reason to leave this big gap in our narrative.

...