Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 294 - The Satsuma Rebellion Part 1: Dutch Kabuki

Episode Date: January 14, 2024

The heroic story of how Samurai Warlord Saigo Takamori rose up against the changing of the times. But actually, it wasn't really about that at all. SUPPORT THE SHOW: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Sources: Andrew Gordon. A History of Modern Japan William Beasley. The Meiji Restoration James Buck. The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 Romulus Hillsborough. Samurai Revolution: The Dawn of Modern Japan Seen Through the Eyes of the Shogun's Last Samurai. Noel Perrin. Giving Up The Gun: Japan's Reversion To The Sword. https://www.historynet.com/satsuma-rebellion-satsuma-clan-samurai-against-the-imperial-japanese-army/

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast, but I guess you probably already knew that. If you like what we do here on the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at www.patreon.com slash lionsledbydonkeys. Just $5 per month gets you every regular episode early, access to our community discord, a digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, as well as its audiobook read by me, and over five years of bonus content. By supporting the show, you support us and allow us to keep our show as it has always been ad-free. Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoy the

show. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I am Joe, and with me, strapped into his samurai armor and carrying a Bud K samurai sword, is Tom. Don't disrespect me that I would drink Budweiser. No, okay. This might be an American thing. Bud K was this awful, read parentheses awesome uh magazine that i'm sure still exists i'm sure their websites still exist as well uh for knife guys oh my god yeah and you could buy like science fiction swords and like you could of course buy entirely too many katanas

um like they'll say they would sell like self-defense knives. They're the most impractical thing on earth. Like, you know, like a pair of like knuckle dusters with like knives in the middle of something ridiculous like that. So yeah, the Bud K samurai is absolutely a type of guy, which I've just inflicted on you, even though you're Irish and have never once heard of Bud K. Pulling up to the function with a kookery oh they they would they would sell something then make a kookery like goddamn normal i mean like yeah look we need to bring back a roaming ronin um we need to bring back you know men operating in a mercenary level solitude we need to bring back I mean to be fair just before we

get into the episode, a quick update. The live show is little over 10 days away at the time of recording. Night 1 sold out. Night 2 small availability of tickets left. If you are coming to the show, bit

of housekeeping. We have a hard curfew we have a stage time at quarter past seven that's 7 15 for americans or people who don't know how to use normal time that are coming and please buy your merch beforehand we will have a merch booth in the venue please buy your merch beforehand we have a short half an hour after the show and we would like to talk to you the fans um rather than me standing at the merch booth panicking um we will have an exclusive live show shirt that at this time should be revealed um we have a small amount of stock of the stalingrad and Hongkrai shirt as well. We have posters of both the live show and of a print of the exclusive live show t-shirt as a poster.

We'll also, for anyone who wants to spend big, big, big, big, big, big money and save, save, save, save, save, save. And save, save, save, save, save, save. We will also have a bundle available for everyone of two t-shirts of your choice, two posters, and an exclusive tote bag. We have tote bags now? Yeah. Did I miss that email? I have no idea what's happening anymore.

You would know if you actually looked at the text I sent you yesterday. Fuck you, I am the WhatsApp Ronan. I don't have to listen to you. Yes. So if you want the tote bag, the bundle will be priced at £65. So you're getting good savings on buying stuff individually. You can get the live show poster, the new merch poster, two shirts and a tote bag. Also, Joe may have books available,

but that is on him. That is actually on my publisher. So yeah, there is a really nice kind of food hall thing near the venue if you want to get something to eat. Doors are at 6 p.m. Show starts at quarter past seven.

That is 715 sharp. And the show should end at about between nine and 930. And when he says pounds, he means the dumb currency they use on these cursed aisles, not pounds of teeth or flesh or I don't know. Looted goods. It's Britain Britain you're trying to assimilate maybe you just bring over looted goods from your homeland can't do that either we are going to have goofs we are going to have gaffs apparently

Joe and Nate are organizing a way to physically torture me on stage that I found about yesterday yeah it's going to be a good time. Looking forward to seeing you all. We're just going to have someone in a CrossFit shirt doing burpees in front of you the whole time.

I will set myself on fire on stage. And another note before we get into this, for people who maybe purchased tickets for Night 1, Night 2 is going to be completely different. It's going to be a completely new episode and it's going to be much shorter than night one and our goal is to save time and have a Q&A

at the end of it. So both of your nights will be different if you feel like being trapped in a room with us for entirely too long over the course of a weekend. And for everyone that is asking, please stop fucking asking. The show is going to be

recorded both visually and audio-wise. The audio will be available to patrons and the video will be available for a small, small fee on Patreon as well. And that actually does have to be paid for in teeth.

Yeah. So please stop tagging me. There's your answer. Keep doing it. Now, Tom, I cannot remember the last time we've done a series where I pitched you an idea and you were like, fuck yeah, let's do it. Normally you just answer, oh no. Yeah. Which, okay, is my goal a lot of the time today is the

first time i pitched you an idea and you were fucking excited about it that's because for the next two weeks we're going to be talking about something i am also deeply obsessed with the Setsuma Rebellion of Japan. Fuck yeah. Samurai time. Fuck yes. Now, dear listeners, you might know the Setsuma Rebellion as the backdrop of Tom Cruise's 2003 documentary, The Last Samurai, which we did cover years and years and years ago as a bonus episode now if you love that movie despite it being completely ridiculous much like myself you actually don't know anything about this period of time because they combined so many like they combined the like elements of the boshin war they combined

elements of the satsuma rebellion uh now there actually is a true story, kind of, of a guy who sort of did what Tom Cruise did in this film, but it was not during the Satsuma Rebellion. It was during the Boshin War, and we will cover that at some point. But in order to talk about the Satsuma Rebellion, we do have to talk about the Meiji Restoration, and I understand what everybody's thinking right now. How the fuck are you going to cover the Meiji Restoration in such a short period of time?

This is not an exhaustive history of the Meiji Restoration. That, in my opinion, is another one of those things that is a podcast series, or a podcast topic unto itself, like a history of the Meiji Restoration or a history of Japan or something like that. If you actually want to hear a four-part history of Japan, listen to Beneath the Skin.

We did it earlier. No, we did it last year. Yes, so I'm going to cover it the best I can in a way where someone will understand the reasons for the Setsuma Rebellion. And that does include me having to touch on elements of the Boshin War as well, because the two are completely and totally linked. It's my bad. Now, prior to the Meiji Restoration, the Emperor of Japan, despite being considered the divine leader of the country, was little more than a figurehead. In reality, Japan was a military dictatorship

under the Shogun, who was the commander-in-chief of the Imperial Armed Forces, as much as the concept of an Imperial Armed Forces existed. It was very divided, very factionalized. I'm using that term to make a hole so so no so nobody be like actually there was no imperial armed forces of shame yes i am aware of

that uh but he controlled the various daimyo who then also controlled their samurai we get it it was a series of warlords with militias. He was in charge of all of them. So if you're listening at home, just imagine in your mind and rotate Joe's hole in your mind. Don't rotate my hole. No hole rotations are going on on this show. Now, since the 1600s, Japan had been under the control of the Tokugawa Shogunate or the Tokugawa Bakufu, which literally means military government. I'm going to use that term most of the time. Tokugawa Ieyasu is the founder of the Tokugawa Bakufu.

Who would have thought? They have the same name. He was born to a stepbrother and a stepsister who were 15 and 16 because it's history and it's gross as fuck. And is also just 99% of P search research uh research returns these days and no one look up the japanese age of consent today yeah don't do that uh don't

don't even search that you'll be put on a watch list um now when he was nine years old he was taken hostage by his clan's political rivals, which was another thing that was normal. They would be taken hostage, which would then in turn mean that unless, you know, say his dad really wants his son to die, he's not going to act against his political rivals, which is actually what I do to rival podcasts. My guest room is full of so many historical podcasters, family members right now.

You have the entirety of the Evans family in your sitting room. That's why we became such good friends. Insurance. He, Tokugawa Ieyasu would fight. And also at this point, that is not his name. Tokugawa Ieyasu would fight, and also at this point, that is not his name. Tokugawa Ieyasu is not his birth name,

but that is the name that everybody knows him by, right? Now, Ieyasu would fight, ally, and work his way through the age of the warring states, eventually founding his own house and clan, that being Tokugawa, the House of Tokugawa. Though at this point, he was something of a client to the infamous Oda Nobunaga. That would change over the next

several years as he rose to power, becoming one of the strongest feudal lords in Japan, specifically after the Battle of Sekigahara, which we will cover at some point. It's a very pivotal battle in Japanese history. Fuck yeah! He was eventually conferred the title of

Shogun, Military Leader. And like I said, Military Leader also means Military Dictator at the time. He built his military government in Edo, which when he moved in, was actually kind of just not

much of a city. And while his military government was established there over the years and years and years, it turned to a sprawling capital city with a greater population than either London or Paris. So this is not a small city by any stretch of the imagination. Now, chief amongst the shogun's responsibilities, and I should point out here,

Japan doesn't have external threats at this point all of japan's threats are internal it's each other it's all the various warlords um so his main responsibility was keeping them all in line now he accomplished this using a few tactics but my favorite one because how inventive it actually is, is called Alternative Attendance. Now, this forced the daimyo, or the feudal lords under him, to live in Edo in alternating years. The years that they were gone, they would have to leave their wives and children in Edo in their place,

much like Tom and Nate have to leave their children in the Netherlands when they're in London. This gave government strength through hostages, but also the added financial burden because the warlords were forced to maintain multiple homes and also be constantly traveling back and

forth. Because remember, there's no way to, there's no fast travel button here. This is just the Tokugawa version of the fucking eu parliamentarians living in brussels and their kid is like in kosovo no that's unfair because unlike eu parliamentary representation the daimyo actually have powers to do things yeah they also actually do things as well it's not like working for a think tank it's not a jobs program for formal like formal think tank ghouls from uh brussels or uh the hague or whatever

and if you're listening that offends you good um now they would have to travel back and forth so they're spending so much time on the road and so much money maintaining two large palatial estates worthy of their standing they hardly had the money or time to go around plotting shit and in some places they felt this financial and time burden more than others for example the lords of satsuma the main domain we will be talking about uh they had to travel over a thousand miles every other year a process that would take months honestly the lords of satsuma would be an incredible 90s hip-hop group name fuck yes psycho takamori dropping the sickest beats straight out of kagoshima that like that is a like wu-tang album ass name actually kind of surprised they didn't swing that one once now probably one of the most famous laws of the bakufu was complete and total isolationism and

a ban on christianity combined with a complete ban on ocean going ships they turned into island north korea all foreigners were banned and the Japanese were banned from leaving. The punishment for violating these rules was death. There was no other punishment. Yeah, like, the isolationist period prior to the Meiji Restoration is, like, super interesting. Because, like, you, like, this is when you see, like, a lot of culture that is harkened back to during the imperial era like really start to develop but also like the kind of the legends that the imperial era would hang on to so

much would be kind of like this is when this shit is happening it's a lot like the Andaman islands to some extent where shipwrecks would happen and most of the time the sailors that wound up wrecked on Japanese shores were murdered. As brutal as the system was, it worked as much as any other system had and brought Japan

peace to an extent. The Shogun was the absolute dictator, and he kept the various lords and samurai in place with a large array of administrative minutiae this hax japanica area i guess you could call it is oh fuck off hax japanica fuck off now there was no peace of course if you didn't happen to be with the samurai who could literally murder someone for looking at him in the street. But this is where we get the picture of the artistic, you know, philosophy samurai who'd go about their day learning how to dance,

learn how to play music, the art of flower arrangement and shit. This is where the idea, the vague idea of Bushido is born because they had transitioned from being warriors in constant state of civil wars, both large and small, to bureaucrats at best, or unemployed dudes who were given a stipend and a title to effectively live their lives in relative luxury, filling their days with what amounted to hobbies. And they couldn't have normal jobs. It was explicitly illegal.

Say if like, because there's no wars to fight, there's nobody to hack to pieces with your sword. I want to go open a store. You can't. You take a government salary and also a rice stipend and you live,

you fill your day, like training martial arts. Sometimes you'll learn how to do poetry and shit. Like they become, and many of them are government bureaucrats. So that is their life now, with the idea that they're still the warrior caste. But in reality, they work at the fucking DMV. Chris Kyle could never.

This went on for generations of samurai, to the point that barely any of them even trained with the swords they carried everywhere. They're no longer studying the blade. No, they just carry it for decoration. Much like a Bud K samurai would.

While you were studying the blade, I was practicing flower arranging. Yeah, exactly. Tea ceremony and whatnot. Now, as Katsu Kaishu wrote, quote, they lived easily in their splendid houses,

became soft and weak, and finally developed into a type that was quite useless. Now, the easiest way to think of this is many of these samurais slowly transformed

into the knights you might see at medieval times restaurants. Now, due to government-enforced isolation, Japan's administration system, their technology, their military could not keep up with the outside world. Nobody can do that in isolation. Now, namely, the part that would really fuck them

is the complete lack of technological advances, which meant Japan set finger painting or whatever as imperial powers quickly began to advance through China, India, Russia's expanding, the United States is expanding, Britain is expanding, Portugal's expanding, the Dutch are showing up.

Meanwhile, Japan, of course, does have some types of gunpowder weaponry, but they're rudimentary at best as people are showing up with battleships and shit. Yeah, you're a samurai sitting there like, painting like a beautiful lotus flower and you just have a guy wash up on you and you're like,

yeah, she's a great sword you have. Can I interest you in some boot polish and a stroopwafel? Your average samurai would be like a Victorian child. You give them a stroopwafel and they just die instantly. He does the kabuki face paint, but it's just blackface. Zwarte Piet is just Dutch kabuki.

Unless you're from Dutch immigration, you're listening, which I treasure our cultural heritage yes you see if you i thought i actually went accidentally went a little bit sean connery there's like yes if you see you know like you go and you put like these yen in these yen coins in this drawer and you get like a nice hot dog or a croquette look that would be revolutionary at this point for japan like it's like peasants farming from like land to that like hand to mouth they're like i don't i can shrug off the need for my samurai overlords because someone just gave me a herring onion and pickle sandwich. Revolution! The Netherlands is a little bit like your rice paddies,

you know, like it's underwater. Fuck. The Dutch are swamp Japanese people. I really hope someone does like a wood cut of Dutch Kabuki, but in the only unoffensive way they possibly can.

And I don't know what that would look like. I think that's impossible. That's true. I think we're just making like a minstrel woodcut. So nobody make this. To be fair, like the other day you were saying you saw someone dressed up as Farty Pete, like just around yeah

yeah it was it was uh sinterklaas and uh uh because we're recording this in december and it was sinterklaas and for people unaware uh there there was a tradition it still exists it still exists though i have been assured by by many normal Dutch people it is rapidly falling out of favor where people dress up as Jevarte Piet, which translates means Black Pete. And they put blackface on. And it is intensely offensive. And most people are moving away from it. And it is rare, at least in cities, to see people still do it. It is rare, at least in cities, to see people still do it. And I was walking through the center of the Hague,

and there was just one person walking around in blackface, and I was as shocked as many of the other people around me to see it. And it's not good. Don't do that. Like, how in this day and age can you argue that, like, oh, it's because he's covered in salt i'm like come on be honest with yourself how could this happen anyway let me go back in time a few weeks and look at the last dutch election ah shit fuck um so by 1853 commodore perry of the u.s navy pulled his warships into Edo Harbor, and soon the shit

was well and truly on Japan's front door. The imperialism, not the blackface. Yes, we went to Japan and saw these great guys called samurai. Look, it's probably exactly what happened. The Dutch were some of the first people to open a trading post

in Japan, and this exchange almost certainly occurred. They're very like us. They're wearing wooden shandles. They're like our clogs. Clogs, but for the field. Yeah, I sold a samurai and a new pair of clogs. This is a great new market for us. This reminds me. Okay, getting

wildly off topic here, but not really. There is an episode of a samurai. There's an episode of an anime called samurai champ lou where a dutch guy like stays in japan and he is just wandering around in like local clothing and wooden sandals but he's blonde haired and blue eyed yeah his name is uh his name is uh joji titsing um i'm reading the the wiki right now it's like yeah um samurai shamblu great show you should watch it it absolutely whips now this is the event that would fundamentally force japan down the road that would turn into well we know how the story ends in 1945. But with the U.S. standing in their faces, Japan was split down the middle on what exactly to do.

Some inside Japan believed that the way forward was by opening the country, embracing the outside resources and technology, and becoming a modern, sovereign nation that would be able to protect itself from outside powers who had just forced themselves upon them as well as enter the international community as an empire with an emperor which this is probably the best thing they could

have hoped for the door has been literally kicked open by an American ship with cannons on it you can't close that again but there's a way you can control it, use positive influences, and so that doesn't happen again. And the other side of the

argument boiled down to literally quote, expel the barbarians. The samurai version of return to tradition. Hey, you're just doing Geert Wilders stuff in Japan. Japanese Geert Wilders is the most cursed idea we've ever had. Thank you. hey you're just doing gear uh geared wielder stuff japanese japanese geared to field there's this the most cursed idea we've ever had thank you now the bakufu struck a middle ground we do want to

expel the barbarians but we need their modernizing technology in order to get strong enough to the point that we can actually do it the samurai class class, however, took a different route. Fuck the foreigners. We have to reject and unite together in order to do it. And the imperial court sided with the samurai, using the emperor as a focal point, a rallying point, due to his position as literally a ethno-nationalist religious figure. The samurai believed the only way they could truly reject the foreigners was to unite under a benevolent superior in the classic Neo-Confucianist ideal. All my homies hate Confucius. You know who else hated Confucius? Hong Christ. Oh, yeah!

It all comes back to eat and live fast, eat grass. That's right. And following that same thought, they saw the emperor as the rightful absolute ruler of Japan. This group had become known as imperial loyalists, rejecting the bakufu as the legitimate government, demanding a return to the direct imperial rule. Low-ranking samurai from Setsuma, Choshu, and Tosa domains led the charge on the ground, while sympathetic

nobles gained control of the imperial court. This led to a strange factionalism within the Bakufu and its supporters because, think of it this way, the Bakufu, at least on its surface, revered the emperor as a deity as well as the

imperial loyalists did, but kind of squared this belief that he actually couldn't be the complete dictator, absolute ruler, was because they needed a military leader to protect the country and keep the domains in line. So that's kind of how they squared that philosophical idea of, So that's kind of how they squared that philosophical idea of, yeah, he is, you know, he is a deified figure, but also he can't be in charge. It was like it was often couched in terms like he's too pure to bother himself with our bullshit. They saw the imperial court, but not the emperor as useless and inept. the emperor as useless and inept. And so if they put the imperial court back in place, because the bakufu

would be like, if we put the emperor in charge, he'll simply be swayed by the imperial court. And the imperial court, not the emperor, of course, fucking sucks. And once that happened, the country would simply just fall back into civil war.

Now, weirdly, the emperor also fell into this camp. One of the worries that the emperor had was that if power was centered around him and not the shogun, it would lead to the domains of Choshu and Setsuma effectively taking power due to their overall military strength and also wealth. Like, Setsuma is so powerful as a domain.

They have a fucking colony. What? Japan doesn't. Setsuma does. Where? Okinawa. Jesus. Now he saw the Shogun as the great mediator between the various factions,

keeping them in check. Again, this was a way for him to say, I can't deal with y'all's bullshit. However, it didn't actually matter much what the Emperor wanted. Ironically, the Imperial Loyalist faction quickly grew in strength, gaining the loyalties of some of the strongest Daimyo in the country. This was made easier by the fact that the shogun famously began to sign more and more unfair and unequal treaties with foreigners and trade and other things that fucked over not only the samurai and their nobles, but also regular people while benefiting the shogun and his inner circle within the bakufu. As the shogun signed more of these, he simply stopped consulting with the imperial court and the emperor before doing so knowing that they

would disapprove not not because this would ever slow him down the imperial court and the emperor was little more than a rubber stamp but yeah too much of a hassle fuck him like what's the point um and this window dressing of authority was so offensive. Like, when he ignored that, that was so offensive that Emperor Komei threatened to abdicate the throne, which was completely unthinkable, but he actually didn't have the power to do that. For the emperor to abdicate,

it had to be approved by the shogun. The imperial loyalist samurai at this point favored direct violent action to solve their problems with both the foreigners and the bakufu. Now, these men of action, we could call them, were the ishenshishi or the men of high purpose. Eventually, they were able to influence Emperor Komei to issue the so-called order to expel barbarians in 1863, though an order from the emperor doesn't actually mean anything if the bakufu has no

intention of following through with it, leading to imperial loyalists trying to do so on their own, and then the bakufu actively fighting them to protect the foreigners. And there was also a purge, getting the Isshin Shishi out of Kyoto. There's a lot of violence against foreigners.

Effectively, traders get ambushed in the streets, hacked down with swords or shot with bows or the occasional gun. Things are bad. And then when that happens, the foreign governments will pressure the Bakufu to crack down on them more and more and more under threat of pulling out all their trading and all this other stuff. In 1866, a new shogun took power, Tokugawa Yoshinobu.

Now, he took office as the Bakufu was rapidly collapsing all around him, devolving into what would become known as the Boshin War between the forces loyal to the Bakufu and the imperial loyalists who wanted the emperor to take complete control. The next year, Emperor Komei died, leaving the throne to 14-year-old Prince Mutsuhito, who would become known famously as Emperor Meiji. Now, this war seemingly went on without any kind of input from the boy emperor, and he just continued his classical education that any member of the Japanese imperial household would have, which, strangely, did not include anything to do with politics. Yeah, he's too busy playing sex games on Roblox on his iPad. Also, he was 14.

What the fuck was he supposed to do about anything, you know? What were you doing when you were 14 years old? Not a whole lot um yeah his uh his roblox character has a svarte pietzkin everything you know i got this from my friends at the dutch trading post he's getting loads of v-bucks from the dutch and he's buying svarte pietzkins they call V-Bucks because it comes from the VOC. So this led to strange events, like both of the Shogun and the Imperial Loyalists sending letters to the Emperor and to the Imperial Court, who one side was technically fighting, asking for approval on their next actions during a civil war

where both of them were claiming to be fighting for the Emperor. So I'm not going to go into the depths of the Boshin War during this episode or even the series because it truly does deserve its own at some point. But within a year of fighting, it was clear to Yoshinobu and his military government that things weren't going so great. This led to an interesting proposal, which was influenced by foreigners and would almost certainly have never fucking worked, but weirder things have happened. Lebanon's politics exists, for example. Yoshinobu's bakufu was being supported by the British and the French,

and they proposed the idea that the bakufu could die. However, Yoshinobu's position as head of the most powerful house in japan could be preserved if japan simply switched to a constitutional republican style of government with yoshinobu as the unelected head of a parliamentary government and all of the other daimyo becoming effectively a house of lords type situation and the the emperor remaining a powerless figurehead yeah this is the type of a british and french interference in international politics that will never happen again and the british and french of course really liked yoshinobu because he would sign anything that crossed his fucking desk

he's like momar gaddafi he's like Momar Gaddafi with less Simtex. Yoshinobu actually agreed to this in 1867. However, the main players in the Imperial Loyalist faction, namely the Choshu and Satsuma domains, the head of Satsuma,

Saigo Takamori, who we will talk much, much more about in episode two, and others, knew that surrender and transformation of Japan into something like a republic was simply unheard of and unconscionable. They wanted imperial rule, and the only way they'd get that was via surrender from Yoshinobu. There was the added risk of possible unrest and rebellion against them at home if the Satsuma and Chosu leaders failed in their clearly stated goal of ending the Bakufu and forcing Yoshinobu from power. But because of the principles of this concept known as Taigu Miban, i.e. keeping a morally correct relationship between a samurai and his superior, like not acting without orders and approval. In this case, the emperor had not approved of their actions.

They couldn't do it. They needed orders from Emperor Meiji in order to legitimize their attack on Edo. And they needed them fast. Meiji in order to legitimize their attack on Edo. And they needed them fast. If Yoshinobu stepped down, resigned, or became fucking president or whatever, nothing would matter anymore. And this is where things

get kinda weird. In an attempt to end the war, Yoshinobu requested a meeting of all the leaders of the 40 strongest domains from the Imperial Loyalist side in Ninjo castle where he ran his government from to tell them he planned on resigning and announcing a complete restoration of imperial rule this infuriated everybody present because he was going to give up and give power back

to the emperor they didn't want that they wanted to be the ones to they wanted to be the ones to take power from him and give it to the emperor do you see the difference here like yeah it's like i i i need to be the one to give him the trees exactly and not to mention it would make them look weak at home they wouldn't be able to flex so much power in the imperial court when they you know these main three chose choshu satsuma and Tosa deliver all this power to the emperor, of course they're going to benefit but if Yoshinobu is just like, ah fuck it, I quit

they don't benefit from that yeah, it upsets the balance Yoshinobu penned a letter to send to the emperor announcing his intentions and sent the letter the next day, which happened to be the same day a letter titled Secret Imperial Decree to Attack the Bakufu was given to the lords of Setsuma and Choshu.

Nobody's entirely sure where this letter came from or who wrote it, but historians all agree that the emperor had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was signed and stamped with an official imperial seal and written in the imperial first person, which is how the emperor writes. Nobody else can write for him in that way. And it was even

written in the kind of language that the emperor would speak in, which is not common Japanese and all of that. But it was not signed by him. Instead, it was signed by three noblemen but then lacked their official seals next to their names, which would and all of that, but it was not signed by him. Instead, it was signed by three noblemen, but then lacked their official seals next to their names, which would have been done in all other official correspondence.

Even the lords of Choshu and Satsuma, who desperately wanted to murder the shit out of Yoshinobu, thought this letter was pretty fucking suspect, and they did not attack. They're like, someone is setting us up here. On the day after that, the emperor yoshinobu's resignation however yoshinobu knew that this wouldn't work his fellow bakufu leaders openly began to hate him and shied him for giving power back to the emperor they accused him of assassinating the last shogun and his competition in line for the role which he possibly did.

And then they accused him of being a secret Imperial loyalist agent because where he was from and the small fact that he had actually never once stepped foot in the capital of Edo while he was in power. The motherfucker just ruled. He was doing work from home before it was cool. He's sitting there with his little laptop. Doing Skype on woodcuts. He's in his pajamas and he's like,

oh shit, someone's coming. This turned out to all be one giant 4D chess shit on Yoshinobu's part. He knew he was never actually going to resign because he couldn't. He needed approval from the ruling council of the Bakufu in order to do it. And just like he thought, they rejected his request. So he could frame his luck, look, I tried to resign.

Furthermore, the council announced a congress of ruling Daimyo and Kyoto to meet because it was clear that the imperial court could not govern. In short, he was going through with this vague republican idea but in reality you would be a dictatorship his ruling council would never allow it to be any other way and he could be like oh shucks damn i'm suddenly ultimate president for life i have no other choice yeah and like the the house of lords idea that he had would strip so much fucking power from the other very powerful loyalist factions that there's no way they would agree to it so there was no way this is ever going to work so yoshinobu could play himself as the great

mediator trying to become this constitutional republic reformer but then knowing it was never going to be approved and he would simply have to crush his enemies yeah so it's like oh i am the victim of like not being allowed to you know push the country forward there is nefarious forces at work and also even if the satsuma choshu tosa and other strong imperial loyalist domains agreed to this, they knew if they allowed the Bakufu to stay in power and centralize power, which he would have in a Republican system, or even at the end of this war, he almost certainly wouldn't have kept things in the status quo going forward so this didn't happen again. They knew the first thing he was going to do was take them the fuck out so this didn't happen again they knew the first thing he was gonna do was take them the fuck out so this didn't happen again so if they let him stay in power in any way they were just looking forward to another war this time with probably less allies and almost certainly their downfall this wasn't some kind of paranoia it was literally on the list of things to do for the

once the war was over so as the loyalists built up their military, Saigo Takamori, along with other leading members of the loyalist movement, reached out to sympathetic people within the imperial court, namely the emperor's grandfather, in order to get legit orders to destroy the bakufu once and for all. Any orders would do, as long as they stood up to scrutiny. In short, they were hoping for an imperial self-coup, which would sideline the emperor long enough to let them do what they needed to be done and end the bakufu. So if you're paying attention at home, both sides of a civil war who both claim to be defending the emperor are also both planning a coup.

Going great. Yep. On January 3rd, 18 1868 they got it an imperial decree that abolished the shogunate and restored the power of imperial rule politically it was done but not militarily there would be the proclamation of a breakaway republic of azo which is act this is where we get the story of the weird westerner joining the the samurai and fighting uh but he was actually in the french navy it's weird um he was a french guy i would like to join the samurai yeah pretty much uh i think there's even pictures of him holding a samurai like a samurai sword in his

french uh dress uniform he's like wearing it on his hip he was like he resigned from the french military in order to do it and then like got in trouble and came back when it was at the end went back to france is immediately pardoned but yeah i'm skipping over the a lot of the boshin war we will talk about the republic of ezo at some point in the future because it's a very interesting story so with the imperial rule in place one of the first acts of the restoration of imperial power was dismantling this feudal daimyo system that had made

the shogunate possible in the first place that meant abolishing the system of feudal lords along with their land holdings now this land holding reformation process was the project of what were effectively considered the fathers of

Meishi Restoration. That was Kido Takeyoshi of Choshu, Saigo Takamori of Satsuma, and Okubo Toshimichi. So they were very, very important. And most importantly, they were the most powerful people in the restoration, and it was their idea. And once they immediately submitted to this land reformation, other powerful lords and landowners agreed and handed over their lands to the imperial center as a symbol and example to what others should do. Even the daimyos who hated the fucking idea became worried that if they didn't immediately follow suit, their loyalty to the emperor would be questioned, so they did. From this came the now centralized imperial government for the first time,

and they began using the still current prefecture system, which each would be controlled by a governor who would be appointed by the central government. Complete change of this feudal system, out of 280 domains, they were formed to 72 prefectures, effectively centering imperial power, the central government's power, and now government people are in charge of each prefecture. Now, most of these governors were already daimios. They were the previous feudal warlords, but the power dynamic had drastically changed. The governors would be not of a noble rank, and therefore their power and station would no longer transfer or be passed down to the next generation. They could only keep a much slower cut of the taxation based on rice collection with everything else going to the central government. The governor could appoint subordinates, which are almost always sycophants and whatnot,

but they had to meet minimum qualifications put forth by the central government. The government would have their hands in everything. Then there were railroads, an education system, a mail system, all instituted by the central government, which suddenly made Japan seem much smaller. They also adopted the Gregorian calendar. A small side note here, Saigo Takamori, main character of our story going forward, hated the new railroad system, which I bring up because I know it's going to piss off a certain kind of person, and I think it's funny. Why did he hate the trains?

He thought the money going into the railroad system would be much better use for military reform. Apparently ignoring the military importance of a railroad system. Furthermore, those stipends from, you know,

the, the former domain to the samurai, like, you know, they were paid to sit around and be fancy lads all day, which we talked about earlier would now be taken away from the governor, former Daimyo and said, be dispersed by a central government office,

which would be established by the Imperial government. So that broke a tradition of generations long tie between a samurai and their daimyo he doesn't pay them anymore the government does another key chain was another key change was the amount given by the government was less than half of what they'd previously been given public sector worker pay cuts. You can't even call samurais workers. What do they do? They create lovely paintings. Poetry.

Samurai labor does not matter. Do not unionize the samurai. Samurai are fucking cops. Samurai can't join the IWW. That's right. This is one of several things that the meiji government was doing in order to break down the edo period caste system and you know smooth everything out a bit you know now this caste system because we haven't really talked about yet was in

descending order of prestige where the samurai the peasants the artisans the merchants and at the very bottom the podcasters meiji restoration podcasters is a great idea obviously every sector of that system would benefit from this new system other than the samurai who are on the top of it all didn't have to work to keep it and largely did nothing except collect the government paycheck yeah actually interesting side story. During this period, there was a huge problem, particularly in places like Edo, of just fires. So, like, everything's made of wood. So, like, buildings, if they, like, went on fire,

would just, like, it would spread really quickly. And the firemen were essentially, like, hired street thugs who would go around in gangs. And like, if your house went on fire, their solution was to run in with axes and chop your house down. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, it stops it from spreading. Yeah. But like, the thing is that like these firemen would like go out, get drunk and get in street brawls like with other firemen gangs look as a former fireman myself return to tradition

my friends if you want to see something really cool look up the firemen's coats from this period because they had these like really thick fabric coats that they would like paint designs on the inside of it as like

a kind of talismanic protection and they fucking go so hard gotta bring them back as like uh bespoke fashion japanese firefighter jackets so the samurai complain they're getting paid so little that it was obvious that the government wanted them to take up actual jobs and earn an actual wage like becoming farmers or artisans which like we said was previously unheard of and illegal for them to do and it was considered a slight against their honor and social standing as a

samurai now without the large salaries they've been getting from their daimyo though they couldn't support their families or their homes which was the point like go get a job you lazy fuck and now this had a small problem they didn't know how to do anything but those things you know they they only could be privileged sword wielding dickheads the government sword wheeling dickheads is a great line.

The government also began to slowly encourage the samurai to give up all the samurai shit. They didn't quite pass the laws banning swords or their, you know, their famous top-knot hairdo, but they encouraged it.

And they didn't get rid of their standing. They still had that. Mm-hmm. For now. Mm-hmm. Now, one of the key, they still had that. For now. Now, one of the key reforms the government had in mind was the modernization of the Japanese military. That would require

something that most countries had at this point. Conscription of the male population. Starting in 1873, every Japanese man would serve four years in the Imperial Army, which now was actually a thing, starting at 21 years old. This completely shattered the samurai castes. It not only destroyed their standing, but their class perception of themselves. Because prior to this, the only professional soldiers,

men with the right to bear arms, were samurai. They held not only a monopoly on violence within the state, but the glories of military service to the emperor. Now, the reasons for this change were obvious. Despite the reforms, the stripping of power from Daimyo, the change to the prefecture system, samurai kept doing samurai shit. For example, one of the first moves towards military reform

did include the samurai, and that was changing the imperial guard to the imperial household guard, which would be made up of samurai from different domains. However, remember, those domains did not exist anymore. So despite the old system of feudal lords

being abolished, the samurai immediately fell back into those factions refusing to follow orders from someone from a different clan despite the fact that fucking clan didn't exist anymore so they had to appoint all these different people in chains of command so people would actually listen and do their job only for that to not work so they had to put saigo takamori who was effectively a national hero and one of the most revered samurai in the country, in charge of the Imperial Household Guard

just so they would listen to someone. So you could see how they're like, if we're going to build an army, we cannot deal with this bullshit. Hence the conscription. Now, this did infuriate Saigo, who despite, he would at this point, and he is kind of lionized these days as a champion of the regular people.

He fucking wasn't. He was a champion of how things had always been. He just wanted the samurai to have better guns. Give a samurai an M16. He wanted things to remain the way they'd always been a professional corps of samurai who had modern weapons with local conscripts pulled up just when war started because wars in japan the boshin war civil wars whatever were also fought by regular people but they were levies they didn't really have much training there There's like, hey, you,

it's time to fucking go, grab your spear or whatever. He wanted that, but with modern weapons. And samurai specifically getting modern military education. He didn't want peasants to have guns. Yep. So you're going to invent

samurais getting fragged by their subordinates? Throwing a smoke bomb that you have to light with, you know, like a wick and throwing it at your samurai. It's gonna take like two minutes for this fuse to burn down, but when it fucking goes, the samurai is fucked. Real intense game of hot potato. Yeah. Now, eventually

Saigo is talked down from his opposition for an offer of conscription of regular people with former samurai being offered to serve as officers with professional education effectively preserving some sense of self-privilege now famously there was an eventual outright ban on the wearing of swords in public the main signifier and effectively the last signifier of the old-class supremacy. This was both a strike against the samurai who refused to modernize, but it was also fucking practical.

We're going to go into this more in episode two, but the Meiji Restoration was not bloodless. The country was wracked by assassinations, riots, and constant fucking samurai rebellions, and they were all armed, and they were carrying their weapons in public. So now all of these rebellions, other than the one, of course, that we will be talking about, failed very quickly, but would inspire others, and then the system would continue.

And the rebellions were always put down by the newly conscripted, mostly modern Imperial Japanese Army. Now, we will talk more about that on episode two, old Japanese army. Now, we'll talk more about that on episode two, but we should talk a little bit about Saigo before, you know, a brief primer on Saigo Takamori before we get a whole episode of him next time. In order to dispel some rumors that have survived about them, during this point, he was a very high-ranking member of government. He was considered a personal friend to Emperor Meiji. He was his fucking tutor tutor and they toured the country together. And like when there was an expedition of the Japanese government

to go to the United States, I believe, they left Saigo in charge of the caretaker government. He was very trusted. He was a literal national hero and a father of the restoration. He was not some like outlier.

However, despite being a solid member of the elite ruling class going back literal generations, he was venerated by the now dispossessed and angry samurai. He was, at least on the surface, a reformer in the imperial loyalist kind of way, which was pretty

clearly against what was going on within the Meiji Restoration. For example, in his former domain, he said, fuck this, and he effectively formed a private army of thousands of men, paying them from government accounts in literal fraud while claiming that the

government corruption in Tokyo was out of control. We'll talk more about his private army next episode. Now, you would think that everything that we just named was the final straw of such a man of the people, Saigo Takamori. Because the government was deeply corrupt. I mean, it was a rapid restoration full of... It was an oligarchy, and it was called as such. It was not what Saigo envisioned the government to be

when he wanted the emperor to be in charge he saw the uh you know the imperial council being full of deeply fucked up and corrupt individuals which is true um but they were also too progressive for him he was a to the bone conservative he wanted traditional Japan, but with modern weapons. He wanted no other reforms. Yeah, and if he could have become a good author, he could have been the early version of Yukio Mishima. He was the same guy! Did he get really horny about death?

Probably. The only difference between Saigo Takamori and Mishima is Saigo Takamori actually succeeded when he tried to do something violent. For anyone listening, we have bullied Joe into reading Mishima. Honestly, it's fucking incredible. How long has it taken us

to convince you to read Mishima? I believe four years. When we made that episode years ago, Nate was like, okay, I know he's a deeply fucked up weirdo, which is still true. And his book is only making that more the case. However, amazing author, fucking brilliant mind outside of politics. Yeah, it's a deeply troubled individual.

So you would think that all this dispossession and dishonor of the samurai and all these progressive things that Saigo Takamori deeply fucking hated would have been the straw that broke his back when it came to working for the Meiji government. But it actually wasn't. Now, like we pointed out, Saigo was an intense conservative within the Japanese government, and he had pretty much fallen out with all of the other fathers of the Meiji Restoration. All of these key fathers of the Restoration, whatever you want to call them, had loyal people within new government ministries, all of whom in turn hated

one another. In short, it was a fucking shitshow. And in the middle of all this, Saigo was the very vocal head of a faction within the government who, of all things, wanted to invade Korea. Listen, as the tendency of warring factions within Japan reaches one, the likelihood uh invading korea also and uh approaches one now when you look at his reasoning very convoluted reasoning it kind of makes sense if you put yourself into his shoes he was a big fan of bibimbap yeah we're really missing the the eggs in our food or whatever yeah he really really really wanted to precipitate

the invention of BTS. The catalyst. The idea was if Japan launched a foreign war, it would inspire nationalism, specifically amongst the very different pissed off former daimyo turned governor and their samurai

who so far refused to fall in line with the central government and spent most of their times at each other's throats. He also believed it would raise Japan standing on the international stage as a no shit empire rather than a proxy to be dominated by the West. And, you know, failing that, Hey,

if we don't invade Korea, Russia will, and then we'll miss out on all this free Korea. That's just laying around. There's so much free Korea guys. He also had another motivation. An invasion of Korea would effectively be a samurai jobs program because they would all get a government salary

and it would stop them from rebelling throughout the country out of boredom and anger. And that part is probably true. It would give them something to do because that's what happens when you have a fucking warrior caste that has no wars to fight. And now they can't pay their bills. They're not going to go out and, I don't know, learn to code.

They're going to start robbing people and rebelling. What is the mage restoration version of learning to code? Learning to export linens? Getting into import export with the local shady dutch businessmen yeah she could work with us we'll teach you how to code saigo deep in his samurai madness really did believe that invading korea would heal the japanese defied and he penned multiple letters saying so. Though, there's also an easier answer than a war-based samurai jobs program, is that Saigo thought if he championed a war

and it succeeded, he would score one against the progressive faction in the imperial government, who at this point, was pretty much everyone other than him. Despite all of this, Saigo believed that Japan needed a moral and ethical reason to go to war against Korea, something they clearly did not have,

because, you know, doing the Japanese New Deal via Korea invasion is not a moral reason to do so. But, like, did the Koreans know they were contemplating this? Yeah, and this isn't the first time they invaded Korea either. Koreans know they were contemplating this. Yeah, and this isn't the first time they invaded Korea either. No, I mean, but like, are the Koreans there just chilling and like suddenly like they get a diplomatic letter saying like, yeah, we're going to invade you. Oh no, they are.

They are not in peaceful terms. They're pretty hostile towards one another. So he believed he could simply create a moral reason to go to war and that they should send an envoy to korea and like with letters saying like you will fall under the japanese emperor knowing that due to their history that envoy would certainly be murdered and then japan would have a reason to go to war now everybody's like anybody who except everybody in the imperial council is like anybody dumb enough to accept this mission knows they're going to die. Nobody's going to take it.

So Saigo said, fuck it. I'll do it. I'll go to Korea and get murdered. And then you invade Korea. Look at dedication to the bit. Once again, he is Mishima. Exactly. And there was a faction of like, even the progressives in the Imperial Comforts, like, maybe we should do this

just to get rid of fucking Saigo Takamori. 100%. There's people like, this dude absolutely sucks. Can we just send him and, like, let him die? And they'd be like, yeah, we didn't actually sanction this mission. He decided to do it himself.

Yeah, he's a freelancer. He's a Japanese freebooter. Now, anybody with a brain between their ears and the government opposed Saigo's plan and for good reasons. It wasn't that Japan

didn't hate invading people. Of course not. In fact, during this timeline, they would invade Taiwan. But Japan was in no shape to fight an international war. They needed to spend their time and money reforming their army,

but also building a modern Navy. They didn't have time to suddenly just go invade fucking Korea. And one of the, the other fathers of the restoration. And so far the most powerful man, the government who is not the emperor Okubo point out that in a debate in the Daijo Khan or the Imperial council, that if Japan sent an envoy to create the sole reason of being murdered so they could start a war, it would be the exact

opposite of a moral reason to start a war. Now this pissed off Saigo, I assume for making sense. Kubo countered with, quote, this venture is entirely beyond comprehension as it completely disregards the safety of our nation and the interest of our people. And that was a direct shot at Saigo, who constantly said the new imperial oligarchy disregard the interest of everyday people. Now, Okubo

is effectively in charge of Japan at this point. He has the emperor's ear, the emperor trusts him, and kind of what he says goes. So he kind of also influences the emperor into saying, we're not going to invade Korea. Two days later, Saigo Takamori resigned from all positions within the imperial government, the office of state counselor, the commander of the imperial household guard, and even a general within the army. Then all of his former samurai from satsuma

resigned their positions within the household guard as well many within the army did too as well but a lot of them didn't like in the rebellion going forward they would he would effectively be fighting his own former samurai and when the emperor was like yo what the fuck are you guys doing go back to to work. They all ignored him. And with that, Saigo Takamori went home to Setsuma, now known as Kagoshima Prefecture. And that is where we'll pick up next time

on the conclusion of the Setsuma Rebellion. Man, this shit rules. Court intrigue, warring factions, a French guy who becomes a samurai. A French weeb Giuseppe Catana that would be an Italian

weeb oh Jacques Catana that's just my grandfather fuck so Tom we do a thing on the show called questions from the Legion if you'd like to ask us a question from the Legion write into the show either on Patreon or on Discord or

you can put it in a boat attach it to Saigo Takamori send it to Korea he'll get murdered and then we'll have a reason to invade Korea go there pick up your question from the Legion and we'll read it on air don't do that last one it's really convoluted

nah do it do it uh today's question from the legion is you guys both go to the gym you have selected which gyms you go to what is a simple red flag to know the gym that you're going to sucks um like i generally have a rule that if you know what your routine is and like no have like a decent enough knowledge of fitness you can do whatever you need to do regardless but for me a big red flag is if there's techno gym equipment because it sucks it's a good one i think when you when you say like a red flag to let you know that the gym sucks your goals and like what the gym has in it are kind of unimportant. It has to do with like how you can immediately read the gym's attitude, right?

Like, are they going to let you do certain things? Assuming you're doing things safely, not breaking equipment. That's you being an asshole. Yeah. Yeah. For me,

not breaking equipment. That's you being an asshole. For me, a red flag that a gym probably sucks is they have rubberized plates or bumper plates but no place to use them. Yeah, 100%. You're using them on a regular squat rack

or a bench press, but you know, since there's no place to use them, if at any point you actually have to use those bumper plates, and by that I mean safely dropping a weight behind you, you're going to get in trouble. So they probably bought them because of, you know, in the last 10 years or so, even large corporate or commercial gyms have seen how people feel towards bumper weights as it being a sign of a quote serious lifting place so they purchase them but they will not allow you to use them in the way that they're intended which is olympic style weight lifting and heavy deadlifts and thing of things of that nature where

a rubberized weight will not damage the floor and they simply shelled out all the money to get them with no intention of you ever using them as intended because they know you can look at them like ah now this is a gym that knows their shit they have good rubberized weights but haha jokes on you you use that shit some guy who gets paid entirely too little is going to come over and be like hey sorry man you can't do that here yeah actually one and it like i have my own kind of like personal preferences when it comes to gyms it's like one of them is there like you know stuff there to clean the benches like is there like if they're constantly if you walk in and there's no like you know paper there to like wipe down a bench immediate red flag and for me as well if the free weight section is too cramped then that is just immediately for me because like how are you if

you have like loads of people doing like free weight stuff or like using benches like and you don't have enough space to actually do stuff um also uh if the cardio equipment is mixed in with the weight stuff oh that's always a bad sign that's a that's a bad sign i did i i did go to a gym when i first got to the netherlands it was like in the central area then it was cheap had very good hours and they had a sign uh in all of them like uh you know on every main floor i had like two it's a very good gym i'm not gonna like say who they are whatever in case they don't they don't want to be involved with this podcast i don't blame them but like there's two floors of good weight equipment and there are signs on all the pillars this is like do not take instagram videos or pictures here we do not want

to be on your social media and like by that i mean like people in the background man like i don't consent to being involved in your fucking weird take talks and stuff yeah like and that's a policy that i prefer in gyms it's not that i dislike people recording themselves lifting that can have a lot of practical value seeing make sure you're doing things correctly um you know maybe you have a personal trainer that you send these videos to those things are all very normal however i don't want to be in the background of your fucking videos i don't consent to that most people wouldn't and there's no way in a regular gym to ensure that doesn't happen without having a policy in place so props to that random gym i've never seen a gym actually have that policy in place and i really liked it so that's that is the that is a green flag for a good gym in fact yeah like um i i don't i haven't been

to a gym after between the hours of 5 p.m and 9 p.m in years at this stage so it's like it much less applies to me because obviously i have a weird job i can go to the gym before work during work whatever i've not gone at like peak times but if you go into a gym and it's during the day and normally you have to go peak times look at how many sets of each way of dumbbell they have and generally how many pairs of plates they have because if you have to go 5 p.m and the place only has like say three barbells and they have like two to three sets of all the plates you're fucked yeah it's a bad sign especially if you happen to be in the middle of like a major city where like you know a rush is going to turn that place into like a mosh pit yeah um also as well people are gonna be mad at me about this but if

you see someone using like three different sets of dumbbells and they're sitting on a bench and not using them and like no one has approached them to act like if they don't have like multiple sets of the same weights of dumbbell and no one has approached them to say hey can I use this that is a red flag for me because I have two gym memberships I have one beside work and I have one at home and the gym I'm at at home has like

one set each of the dumbbells between 2 kilos and 20 and then they have like the 20 to 40's where they have I think think, two sets of each of them. If you're doing anything with lighter weights, it's super annoying if it's in any way busy. But the good thing about that gym, even when like, I can sometimes be a bit rude if I see someone using like four sets of dumbbells and they're sitting on a bench doing stupid super sets.

And I'll just be like, can I use those dumbbells in between your sets? And they're like, yeah, sure. Because like most of the time, like they're doing four exercises sitting there for five minutes. I would counter that is not a red flag for a gym as much as a red flag for that guy being a dick. Yeah. Like you learn. No gym etiquette none yeah that's like this is a thing that i i think is actually getting better a lot of people will be like

oh people are so rude in the gym now it's like i think it's getting so much better that people are so much more polite than they were a couple of years ago especially before covid like people are kind of much more conscious of like going up and asking someone's like oh how many sets have you got left like it's the gym has become a lot more of an inclusive place as well as like just a variety of people going but like yeah be polite uh clean your shit after you fucking use it and uh yeah because no one wants to see your taint print on the bench. And going back to a story that you have told before, wear shoes!

And Tom, thank you so much for joining me on part one of the Setsuma Rebellion. Plug your shows. Listen to Beneath the Skin, the show about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. Last year we actually did a four part series about the history of everything told through the history of tattooing. Last year we actually did it was a four part series

about the history of Japan told through its tattooing so we covered the indigenous Ainu people of Hokkaido who had a traditional tattooing culture that was then wiped out by mainland Japan during the colonization

of Hokkaido we talked about the major restoration we talked about japan in the pre-war during world war ii period and in the 20th century so if you want to learn a lot about like japanese culture um check out that series listen to that i'll put it in the show notes so you can check that out maybe get more of a background the meiji restoration and just history in general in that period because it's super interesting and if we just can't spend that much time on it otherwise the

series would just be called the Meiji restoration and again thank you so much for listening to the show thank you for supporting the show if you like what we do here consider supporting us via Patreon you get everything early regular episodes you get bonus you get you get almost six years of bonus content now you get everything early regular episodes you get bonus you get

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time restore the emperor