Thank you, Jessica!

Thanks, Roger!

Thanks!

Thank you!

I am also excited to begin the next stage of this work at Harvard University as a Reischauer Institute Postdoctoral Fellow this August, where I will develop the dissertation into a book while continuing work on my next project, How Wars End: Japan’s Endgame as Global History.

My sincere thanks to my examiners, Prof Fredrick Dickinson and Dr David Motadel, for their generous feedback, to Prof John Nilsson-Wright for chairing the discussion so thoughtfully, and above all to my supervisor, Prof Barak Kushner, for his unwavering support throughout.

Happy to share that I passed my PhD viva with no revisions today! My dissertation traces how Japan mobilised monarchy as a flexible instrument of statecraft across the remaking of the international order from 1921 to 1975.

All of that led me to start reading the memoir (published only about a week ago or so ) by 大蔵栄一 二・二六事件への挽歌（上, 下）

that is often remembered in retrospect as Japan’s democratic interlude.

I am not quite sure what to make of it. It is certainly interesting. I did not think he was idealising them; rather, he seemed to be suggesting that the rebels did not emerge from outside the order they attacked. They were products of, and were formed within, the same political world

I knew you wouldn’t buy his populism argument, and that is exactly why I asked you :) But there was another piece I read towards the end of it, by Hirayama Shūkichi, on how writers and public intellectuals viewed the February 26 Incident, which I found interesting.

I was looking at them yesterday too. I thought about writing a short piece, but decided to give it a miss this time. Have you read the Chūō Kōron pieces on the 2.26 incident?

The February 26 Incident of 1936, which happened on this day ninety years ago, was modern Japan’s most serious coup attempt and led to four months and twenty days of martial law.

The more I work on it, and the more I live through the present moment, the more convinced I become that historical research on Japan’s surrender is more important than ever.

My brilliant zemi-sensei, Inoue Masaya, at Keio University is among the speakers!

I cannot make it to this event because of my teaching responsibilities, but it is on Friday and you really shouldn’t miss it!

New primary source for modern Japanese history: a collection of Admiral Takarabe Takeshi’s 1931–32 diaries, alongside transcribed letters to Saitō Makoto. A front-row view of Manchuria, the May 15 Incident, and behind-the-scenes cabinet politics.
www.hanmoto.com/bd/isbn/9784...

Eurocentric or America-centric historians for not delving deeply enough into wartime Japan, we historians of Japan also bear some responsibility." My next project will be one attempt to meet that challenge.

Toward a global history of bombing in the Second World War: Taking Japan seriously Published in Journal of Strategic Studies (Ahead of Print, 2025)

Sheldon Garon, on Richard Overy’s Rain of Ruin: "Nonetheless, we must recognise the limits of a book that attempts to tell the Japanese story without using Japanese-language documents. Although one might criticise www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

President Gerald R. Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put their shoes back on after touring Nijō Castle, Kyoto (1974).

By late May 1945, Mao was already mapping out postwar Japan. He favoured keeping the emperor as a figurehead with no absolute power, and still envisaged Japan retaining the imperial institution.

What an interesting piece - thank you for sharing it, John.

My PhD dissertation’s last chapter, first image (submission due very soon).

Archival photograph: Emperor Shōwa (Hirohito)’s funeral procession departing the Imperial Palace main gate (1989).

Not a perfect translation, perhaps, but it opens:

‘Raise the nation as one and humbly welcome him,
how radiant the sacred carriage.
Cherry blossoms have crossed over, how fair (or bright) this day.
So it should be, right and proper:
Japan-Manchukuo amity grows ever deeper.’

満洲国皇帝陛下奉迎歌　【日満同盟】 YouTube video by 歴史資料

While writing on Puyi, monarchical diplomacy, and the making of Manchukuo, I had the 1935 welcome song - sponsored by Yomiuri for his first visit to Japan - on loop; it lets you hear how ‘parity’ was staged.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfRw...

Congratulations Hannah!!! So looking forward to reading it!!

I look forward to writing on her more.

This life beside Hirohito, rendered in the official chronicle, is valuable not merely as biography but as a lens on the shifting ideal of imperial womanhood in modern Japan - restoring depth to a figure long confined to silence and revealing quiet forms of agency where convention saw passivity.

あえて実録に記されなかった香淳皇后の発言・動静　宮内庁の説明は：朝日新聞 宮内庁が17年かけてまとめた「香淳皇后実録」は、本文と目次など計13冊からなり、歴代皇后の実録としては最も長い。しかし、通読した歴史研究者からは「あえて記されていないと思われる事績がある」との声もあ…

I first heard from Hara-sensei that the Imperial Household Agency would release the ‘official’ record of Empress Kōjun - consort of Emperor Hirohito and known in life as Empress Nagako. Now accessible: 97 years across four eras, from Meiji to Heisei. www.asahi.com/articles/AST...