Latest / POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa
Where Did Half of Tokyo Go? - The Dark History of Modern Japan
The Meiji Restoration is usually taught as a tidy handover: the shogun’s side surrendered Edo Castle, the new government moved in, and everybody went home for tea. And yet, by 1872, Tokyo had around 580,000 residents, down from a million or more at its peak.
The textbooks say the daimyo packed up and left.
This week’s episode asks why half of Tokyo disappeared in less than ten years, why every government needs to be on “the right side of history”, and why a French person and a Japanese person can look at the same revolution and see two entirely different Marie Antoinettes.
A word of warning…
The skinny
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