In the Meiji at 150 Podcast, host Professor Tristan Grunow (UBC, Department of History) interviews specialists of Japanese history, literature, art, and culture located on campus or who come to UBC for public events. Topics covered will range from the position of the Meiji Restoration and Meiji Period in each scholar's research, to how they view the significance of the Restoration in Japanese and global history, and finally to how they teach the Meiji Period in their classrooms.
In the first episode, Dr. Thomas Conlan (Princeton University) gives us a view of the Meiji Restoration from the perspective of late-medieval Japan. We discuss how viewing the Restoration in the longue durée reveals transformations and developments, especially in military technology, that are obscured when the story is started in 1868.
