The Samurai Archives Japanese History Page
173 episodes listed below
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Follow your hosts on a trek into Japanese history, from ancient Japan to the end of the Samurai and all points in between - culture, warfare, literature, and interviews. The Official Podcast of the Samurai Archives Japanese History page.
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Scholarly conversations connect Japanese historical evidence with the choices behind documentaries, games, and modern interpretations of the samurai past.
Chris turns Japanese history into a working conversation, bringing scholars and other podcast hosts together to test how evidence, interpretation, and popular storytelling meet.
A Netflix samurai documentary gets historians' margin notes, and you get the conversation behind them.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A recovered seminar on how Sengoku power was built, inherited, and taken.
This recovered episode offers a clear account of Sengoku daimyo and the way provincial power shifted from shugo and shugodai to retainer houses that displaced their nominal overlords.
A historian's read on Ghost of Tsushima that pushes back on the game's wartime framing.
The episode works best when it sets the game's honor versus Mongols frame against Bender's reminder that warfare in this period was messier than clean hero stories allow.
Surviving gates and steep approaches frame the hard practical work of rebuilding after disaster.
Shuri Castle comes through as a damaged landmark that is still partly open to visitors, with the Hoshinmon gate offering a view into the central plaza.
A measured look at Shuri Castle's destruction and the meanings carried by its rebuilding.
The 2019 Shuri Castle fire becomes a way into the heavier question of what a royal palace can hold after it has already been lost once. Chris's conversation with Dr.
A measured, multi voice critique of Netflix's Age of Samurai Battle for Japan and what it leaves out.
Netflix's Age of Samurai Battle for Japan is treated less like a neat verdict and more like a discussion that keeps reopening the same questions.
A source-conscious discussion of Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan that zeroes in on how the visuals can overstate the history.
Chris hosts part two of the conversation about Netflix's Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan, with Nathan Ledbetter, Elijah Bender, historian Megan Gilbert, and Josh Badgley from the Chronicles of Japan podcast.
A database tour that makes late Tokugawa politics feel immediate and documented.
Late-Edo political pressure is the real subject, and the discussion keeps it vivid by moving through translated records one item at a time. Letters, petitions, shogunate replies, and public accusations stop reading like archival clutter and instead form a clear account of a…
Elijah Bender treats Ghost of Tsushima as a way into pre-modern Japanese history, with a focus on Yakuza culture and Edo-period governance.
The episode centers on what historical accuracy is actually for -- not whether Ghost of Tsushima gets the Mongol period right, but why players find a story set there compelling.
Phoebe Judge narrates true crime history and interviews the authors who uncovered it.
Dramatized deep dives into American history, from the Galveston hurricane to Harper Lee's Mockingbird.
Dana Schwartz narrates the violent lives of monarchs, warlords, and queens.
Tracy Wilson and Holly Frey narrate overlooked history, from Courbet's realism to IUD regulation.
Mike Duncan narrates Rome's full history solo, from Aeneas to Romulus Augustulus's exile in 476.
Travis Seifman explains how the University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute turned the 10-volume Ishin Shiryo Koryo into a text-searchable database and is now translating it into English.
The conversation begins with Netflix's Age of Samurai Battle for Japan.
Five historians and podcasters — including two who appeared in Netflix's Age of Samurai: Battle for Japan — dissect the docuseries in Part 2 of their roundtable.
Dr.
Chris opens a recovered bonus episode that had sat unfinished for years.
Dr.
Shuri Castle had no sprinkler system, but it did have a "drencher system" from outside.
Chris and Dr.