Show notes
The Asia-Pacific War of 1937-1945 has deep roots. It also involves a Japanese society that's been called one of the most distinctive on Earth. If there were a Japanese version of Captain America, this would be his origin story.
Highlighted moments
There's a predator or prey law of the jungle thing going on in the later 19th century. And the job the Japanese see for themselves is to convert themselves from something that's seen as potential prey into something that's seen as obvious predator.
“The exception was the armed services, right of supreme command, which made the services directly responsible to the emperor and to no civil authority. It thus gave the army and navy the legal authority to act and speak in the name of the imperial throne.”
“The media shows the newsreels and plays it up. The public is cheering. What are you supposed to do? Denounce them? And remember, nobody in the foreign world out there at all knows that you don't control your own army. You don't want to admit that to them. So you kind of have to own these things now.”
“if you locate Beijing, which used to be called Peking back in this era, but if you locate Beijing up at Michigan's upper peninsula, that would put Shanghai over by Washington, D.C., Canton down by New Orleans, Wuhan, they write, would be where St. Louis is approximately, and Chongqing would be in southwestern Kansas.”
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