The Last Samurai: Bushido, European influence, and howizters w/ Isaac Meyer

09/03/19 • 78 min

Isaac Meyer’s History of Japan Podcast!!

Japan post-isolation

Tokugawa rule. Can historical economics be interesting? The introduction of tightly-controlled Dutch trade in Japan preceeding the Meiji restoration. Western opposition. Fighting over western presence and figuring out how much Western influence Japan can tolerate while still being Japanese. The return of the Emperor.

Europeans in Japan

Recognizing the relative militrary reputations of Britain, France, Germany, and the US at the time. French military advisors in irl Japan during the Meiji restoration. Jules Brunet as the closest real-life analogue to Tom Cruise’s Algren. Spheres of influence.

Samurai

War basically between and within the Samurai class. Samurai with side jobs. Disbanding the social class with the swords. Samurai civil war armor and its increasing disutility as firearms improve. The point of the elaborate headpieces.

Samurai with a Katana c. 1860 Felice Beato, public domain Saigō Takamori

The irl analogue for Ken Watanabe’s character. Trying to fight Korea. Accidentally creating revolutionaries. Takamori’s last stand after his forces ran out of bullets. “The Last Samurai” and the ease of Japanese punning.

Saigo Takamori before 1877 Edoardo Chiossone, public domain Foreign samurai

English-born “Samurai” and how/whether a foreigner could actually become a real samurai. The (probably) African-born “samurai” Yasuke, working as personal bodyguard for daimyō Nobunaga.

Bushido

Creating your warrior narrative after your period of real marshall utility. Analogy with European chivalry. The carrying of Bushido culture from Samurai time into WWII Japan. The circumstances where ritual suicide begins to seem like a reasonable option.

Guns

Arqebuses all over the joint before the period of the film. Samurai gun-kata. Wooden cannons, howitzers, and artillery classification.

The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori by Mark Ravina: iTunes Amazon
Stand Up For Your Rights by History of Japan Podcast: Part 1 Part 2
Bushido Blade: Wikipedia
Japanese Milk Bread: NYT Cooking via Google page cache

Support the show!

Isaac Meyer’s History of Japan Podcast!!

Japan post-isolation

Europeans in Japan

Samurai

Samurai with a Katana c. 1860 Felice Beato, public domain Saigō Takamori

Saigo Takamori before 1877 Edoardo Chiossone, public domain Foreign samurai

English-born “Samurai” and how/whether a foreigner could actually become a real samurai. The (probably) African-born “samurai” Yasuke, working as personal bodyguard for daimyō Nobunaga.

Bushido

Guns

Arqebuses all over the joint before the period of the film. Samurai gun-kata. Wooden cannons, howitzers, and artillery classification.

The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori by Mark Ravina: iTunes Amazon
Stand Up For Your Rights by History of Japan Podcast: Part 1 Part 2
Bushido Blade: Wikipedia
Japanese Milk Bread: NYT Cooking via Google page cache

Support the show!

Previous Episode

First Man: moon rocks, moon lasers, and the edge of space

One Small Step

Worrying the minimum amount about your speech. The difficulty of quoting noisy radio transmissions.

Because it is haaaahd

Recognizing the small temporal distance from the first powered flight to the first moon landing. The cutting edge of the early space program. Test piloting. Gemini.

The edge of space

Defining the edge of space. The “Karman Line”: transition from atmospheric lift to orbital velocity. Complications and redefinition of where “space” begins. Geopolitics, ruining everything since forever.

The “right stuff”

Badass engineer pilots. Moving fast and breaking things. Selection testing. Giving prospective astronauts ice-water wet willies. The importance of simulation in the early space program and the difficulty of simulating things we haven’t actually ever done or seen up close.How hard it really is to stay conscious under high-g stress.

Moon landing

Monocular depth cues. Light and shadow, unfamiliar objects, and depth perception. Equatorial noon on the equinox when stuff looks creepy: Lahaina Noon.

Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment

Retroreflectors and really really powerful lasers. Tiny photonic returns: 1 out of every 1017 photons shot at the moon mirror make it back for our detection. Multi-mile laser beams. Confirming relativity ftw.

ROCKS

... from the moon! And some regolith to boot. Vacuum transport for moon samples and how we work with them on Earth’s surface without contaminating. The difficulty of maintaining a a very strong vacuum vs nonreactive gasses. Detecting the provenance of proposed moon rocks. NASA’s moon-rock cataloguing system.

Moon-landing video

Viewership numbers. NASA’s custom video encoding and the incredibly analog conversion methods employed to bring it to television.

What if

What if it didn’t work out? The Nixon speach made ready just in case. “In Event of Moon Disaster.”

What now

Why we have no rockets now to match the power of the Saturn V. Loss of engine-production expertise. Looking at near-future Moon and Mars missions.

Where does NASA keep the Moon Rocks? by Smarter Every Day: YouTube
Apollo Television by Bill Wood: NASA

Support the show!

Next Episode

Gangs of New York: history of The Five Points, immigration, and archaic criminal lingo

Language

Creating the dialects, idolects, and accents of the five points. Historical Language sleuthing. Daniel Day Lewis’ vocal performance.

Historicity

“A drama, not a documentary.” The overstatements of the loose source book “The Gangs of New York.” Compressed timeframes. Framing the story of the “gangs of New York” through the lens of the Italian mobs of the early 20th century.

Blight

“The Great Famine” and “The Potato Famine.” Blight: not a fungus! Actually non-photosynthetic algae. Living on only potatoes: pretty doable! How the blight was delivered from America and was able to flourish under the seasoncal conditions in Ireland.

Coming to America

Migration of Irish into (mostly) New York City. Staying where you land because you lack the resources to move on. The conditions on the long boat ride over.

Old New York

New York: like now, but smaller and mostly woods and marshes etc. Draining and filling the stinky sewage lake to make a place for the five points. American growth and the spoilage of nature.

The Five Points

Not as crimey as you heard! But, maybe just as grimey. Discerning quality of life in the five points from archaeology, correspondences, censuces, bank records, and other sources. Common people, eating meat; for every meal! Chain immigration.

Corruption

Using the Irish vote. Competitive firefighting. Tweed’s truly impressive corruption.

Gangs

Bill the Butcher. 19th century gang names. The dueling origin stories of the “Dead Rabbits.” Inter-linguistic phono-semantic matching.

Draft riot

History washing over local squabbles. Lynchings. Violently protesting the purchasability of draft vexceptions. Thge New York Times offices and machine guns and molten lead.