In this episode, Dr. Eiji Okawa (University of Victoria) documents how the Meiji Restoration impacted the epistemology of history in Japan and Japanese overseas migration in the late 19th-early 20th centuries.  We discuss ideas of "Japanese-ness" in premodern Japan and find continuities with conceptualizations of identity, language, and group among Japanese diasporic communities in British Columbia in the face of systemic racism and violence.

The Meiji at 150 Podcast