Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcomed to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy Wilson and I'm Holly Fry and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the Middle Ages, but maybe not as
Speaker 1: you expect. Yeah, I think most people think of the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages and they get a very kind of European
Speaker 1: view because their mind conjures those images. Well, especially since
Speaker 1: I've been looking at sort of the numbers of where
Speaker 1: our listeners are overwhelmingly United States, and if you add
Speaker 1: in like the UK, Australia and Canada, that's NS and
Speaker 1: I would imagine that giant chunk of listeners has probably
Speaker 1: mostly heard about the Middle Ages in the context of Europe,
Speaker 1: which did give us some pretty cool things like the
Speaker 1: Book of Kills in the Bayou Tapestry, both of which
Speaker 1: have episodes in the archive. Also Courtly Love, Baowulf, Canterbury Tales,
Speaker 1: Song of Roland, lots of interesting and cool literal nature
Speaker 1: and art and architecture. But really, other than that, the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages have this reputation for being this depressed, war
Speaker 1: torn disease written, generally filthy part of history that borrowed
Speaker 1: most of its advancements from other cultures, and then on
Speaker 1: top of that there were the Crusades and the Black Death.
Speaker 1: So while interesting things happened, very few people, if they
Speaker 1: could time travel would be like Middle Ages or where
Speaker 1: it's that for me totally going there. But so number one,
Speaker 1: that's that perception is not really true of the entirety
Speaker 1: of the Middle Ages. And number two, that really was
Speaker 1: the situation in Europe. The same period of time was
Speaker 1: really different for other parts of the world. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the Hand Period in Japan,
Speaker 1: which spanned from seven ninety four to eleven eighty five,
Speaker 1: so kind of a chunk right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages. The Hand Period started when Japan moved
Speaker 1: its capital from Nara, which is the nation's first permanent capital,
Speaker 1: to hay On q which later became Q two. During
Speaker 1: this period, China had a really heavy influence on Jack
Speaker 1: and his culture, and we have a really good idea
Speaker 1: of what that culture was like, especially within the context
Speaker 1: of the Imperial court, thanks to a woman known as
Speaker 1: say Shonagone, and she served as a lady in waiting
Speaker 1: to the Emphassis court and kept a book of observations
Speaker 1: and lists and other authorited snippets that were about her
Speaker 1: time there. That's what we're going to talk about today.
Speaker 1: So people who keep asking for more royalty, here you go.
Speaker 1: We have some more royalty, but maybe not the royalty
Speaker 1: that you were expecting. Well, but we've also gotten requests
Speaker 1: for non European royalty in need covering it. Yes, uh so,
Speaker 1: just for backgrounds, say, shonagone was born around nine and
Speaker 1: that isn't actually her name. Shonagon is a rank which
Speaker 1: means minor counselor, and say is a reference to her
Speaker 1: father's name. So what her actual name that her family
Speaker 1: called her at birth was is completely unclear in the
Speaker 1: historical record. Yeah, we do know who her father was.
Speaker 1: Her father was Kiowara Noe Moto Suke. He was a
Speaker 1: prominent and highly respected poet and a minor public official.
Speaker 1: We're not totally sure who her mother was, though one
Speaker 1: contemporaneous source suggests it was a woman named Hagaki who
Speaker 1: was a poet and possibly also a prostitute. But in
Speaker 1: spite of having one or possibly two poet parents, Shanagan
Speaker 1: didn't really have a reputation for being a good poet herself,
Speaker 1: and she insisted herself that she was terrible at poetry.
Speaker 1: Another prominent writer at the time, Murasaki Shikiboo, author of
Speaker 1: The Tale of Genji, which most people have heard of, uh,
Speaker 1: seems not to have liked her, writing in her own
Speaker 1: diary that Shanagan was gifted but presumptuous and was basically
Speaker 1: a frivolous woman who liked put on airs. As a
Speaker 1: side note, Murasaki Shikiboo also served in the court of
Speaker 1: Empress Shoshi, who was empressa She's rival, and that's a
Speaker 1: whole story that we're going to get into, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna get the the backstory on that bit of drama
Speaker 1: coming up, yes, because there is a lot of dramatic
Speaker 1: conflict in this story. In Shanagan went to serve in
Speaker 1: the court of Empress Tashi, who we just mentioned. She
Speaker 1: was also known as Empress Sodoko. Some accounts say that
Speaker 1: Shanagon had been married and divorced before entering service, and
Speaker 1: that her only other two options at that point were
Speaker 1: either to join a Buddhist convent or to remarry. We
Speaker 1: don't really know if that's completely accurate, but regardless of
Speaker 1: the reason, she wound up serving in court for about
Speaker 1: ten years, and she documented a lot of that time
Speaker 1: in her pillow book, and in Japanese this book pillow book,
Speaker 1: is known as Makura nososhi or random pillow notes. And
Speaker 1: Shonagon started writing hers towards the end of her time
Speaker 1: at court. But there's a story to how this actually happened.
Speaker 1: Paper was at that time really expensive. Shonagon wrote that
Speaker 1: the menace star of the Center, whose name was Corey Chica,
Speaker 1: who was also Taci's brother, brought the Empress a gift
Speaker 1: of paper and asked her what book she would like
Speaker 1: to have copied onto it. Shanagan said that they should
Speaker 1: make it a pillow And there's all kinds of academic
Speaker 1: discussion about what she actually meant by that, whether it
Speaker 1: was a joke or a pun, or whether it referred
Speaker 1: to pillar pillow books that people kept as a matter
Speaker 1: of course, or whether it referred to the hard pillows
Speaker 1: that people in Japan were using at that time. But regardless,
Speaker 1: tacI gave shown a go in the paper, and showing
Speaker 1: a Goan wrote whatever she wanted to on it. And
Speaker 1: there's been a fair amount of debate about whether shan
Speaker 1: Agon ever intended for her work to be read by
Speaker 1: other people, or if it was just for her. Uh.
Speaker 1: Given how expensive paper was, and that this paper was
Speaker 1: actually given to the Empress to provide her with a
Speaker 1: book for her own library, there's, you know, a logical
Speaker 1: conclusion that what Shanagan wrote was always supposed to be public.
Speaker 1: The writing itself also has a tone that hints that
Speaker 1: there was a reader in mind. It wasn't just personal
Speaker 1: inward reflections, uh, in diary form like people would normally
Speaker 1: write if they thought no one was going to look
Speaker 1: at it. Right. But at the same time, Seanagan also
Speaker 1: wrote about being extremely embarrassing, uh when somebody took the
Speaker 1: book and then pass it around at court. In the
Speaker 1: section called it is getting so dark, which is how
Speaker 1: the addition that I have of it concludes. She also
Speaker 1: says that she regrets that the book ever came to light.
Speaker 1: The end product of this gift of paper and Shana
Speaker 1: gons writing is a collection of observations, poems, lists, and
Speaker 1: other really interesting snippets of life at court. It's part diary,
Speaker 1: it's part commonplace book. To some degree, it's an essay collection,
Speaker 1: and one d and sixty four of the things in
Speaker 1: the book are just lists, lists of hateful things, depressing things, things,
Speaker 1: things that make one's heartbeat faster, regrettable things, and some
Speaker 1: of these lists are really just uncannily evocative. Yeah, today,
Speaker 1: how all of these different things are arranged in the
Speaker 1: edition that you read really varies wildly depending on the
Speaker 1: translation and how it's been edited. We don't really know
Speaker 1: how they were originally presented, because all of the surviving
Speaker 1: editions of this book are copies from at least five
Speaker 1: hundred years after Shanaghan's death, So you can get a
Speaker 1: really different experience depending on how the person doing the
Speaker 1: editing has arranged all these different bits. And in spite
Speaker 1: of you know, these outstanding questions of how it originally
Speaker 1: was arranged and ordered, uh, the book has survived in
Speaker 1: one form or another for more than one thousand years,
Speaker 1: and today it's considered both a work of art and
Speaker 1: a historical document. One of the first episodes that Holly
Speaker 1: and I worked on together was on Marjorie Kemp and
Speaker 1: her autobiography, which gave a lot of insight into middle
Speaker 1: class life in medieval England, and similarly, shann Aghans Pillow
Speaker 1: Book has become a primary source of nation about court
Speaker 1: life and hay On Japan. Her book, as we said before,
Speaker 1: covers about ten years that she spent in service there,
Speaker 1: so the basics on the environment of the book. The
Speaker 1: Empress and her ladies in waiting spent a lot of
Speaker 1: their time in a salon behind screens, curtains, grates, and
Speaker 1: wall hangings that were all meant to keep men and
Speaker 1: strangers from seeing them. So they spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time within the confines of these portable curtains that kept
Speaker 1: them from view, and they wore layers of dresses and
Speaker 1: robes with skirts and pants underneath. Yeah. I think if
Speaker 1: you look at historical pictures sometimes you'll see the many,
Speaker 1: many robes one on top of each other and say,
Speaker 1: I always think, who that looks beautiful, while other people go,
Speaker 1: I could never live in that. Yeah. Well, it was
Speaker 1: also a progression of of fashion, like it had sort
Speaker 1: of started as address with comfy pants under and then
Speaker 1: gradually the fashion trended toward more and more layers, and
Speaker 1: because you had to show more and more beautiful and
Speaker 1: expensive of in luxurious fabric. Yes, that was the whole point.
Speaker 1: I get so excited. Yeah, there are several things in
Speaker 1: this book that are totally a poly's alley. In addition
Speaker 1: to the pretty fabric their stuff about sewing and cats. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: there's also a big focus on manners and etiquette and gossip.
Speaker 1: And on that last point, Shanaghan's opinion was that people
Speaker 1: should not be angry when they are gossiped about, because
Speaker 1: they also gossip about other people. So basically, don't dish
Speaker 1: it out if you cannot take it. That's kind of
Speaker 1: my stance, but also just that that's part of the
Speaker 1: contract you make being part of a society that people
Speaker 1: will discuss other people. And it's not even always in
Speaker 1: a negative way, because some people really abhor the concept
Speaker 1: that other people are talking about them when they're not present. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we had that's going to happen. That's just part of
Speaker 1: the deal living with other people. We had a whole
Speaker 1: episode on the culture of gossip in our prior podcast.
Speaker 1: So many of the passages in this book detail the
Speaker 1: comings and goings of the Emperor and Empress and the
Speaker 1: other officials uh and whatnot from the courts. There are
Speaker 1: also religious observances noted in it, the primary religious influences
Speaker 1: being Buddhism and Shinto. Days of abstinence are noted and
Speaker 1: all kinds of just everyday happenings. One of the themes
Speaker 1: that comes across in the Pillow Book that's also common
Speaker 1: in writing about royal and aristocratic life in the West
Speaker 1: is that it can be deeply painfully boring. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of coming up with something to do just to
Speaker 1: have something to do, and ladies would sometimes do things
Speaker 1: like go on religious pilgrimage more for the sake of
Speaker 1: having an outing than for their own spiritual development. So
Speaker 1: some of the things that she documents in this book
Speaker 1: lots and lots of festivals and rituals. For example, the
Speaker 1: first month after the new year at all kinds of
Speaker 1: festivals and celebrations. One of these was the Festival of
Speaker 1: Blue Horses, which was a tradition that they borrowed from China.
Speaker 1: Uh and that is a parade of twenty one horses
Speaker 1: for the emperor, which sounds sort of beautiful. Originally these
Speaker 1: horses had been gray, but by the time of Shanagones writing,
Speaker 1: white horses were actually used, and white is the color
Speaker 1: of purity in the Shinto religion, and the gray horses
Speaker 1: were also too rare for that to really be a
Speaker 1: doable thing to herd up twenty one of them to
Speaker 1: parade along. Yeah, the idea of twenty one incredibly rare
Speaker 1: horses is nice and fury why that would be a
Speaker 1: parade honoring a high official. There's also the Festival of
Speaker 1: Full Moon Gruel, and that is when people of the
Speaker 1: court would conceal gruel sticks about their persons to hit
Speaker 1: one another with. This came from a belief that being
Speaker 1: hit in the thighs with the stick that was used
Speaker 1: to stir the gruel would lead a woman to give
Speaker 1: birth to a baby boy. And this is a tradition
Speaker 1: that wasn't unique to the Imperial Court, and it continued
Speaker 1: in more rural parts of Japan for a really long time.
Speaker 1: I'm just processing the whack a mole element of like
Speaker 1: determining your baby's sex well, and also of that you're
Speaker 1: concealing a stick and your sleeve or whatever so that
Speaker 1: you can whack people with it, And yes, the good
Speaker 1: thing to do well, but it's it's really only in
Speaker 1: some contexts is a good thing. There's a whole passage
Speaker 1: about the scandalous nous of of when a gentleman whacked
Speaker 1: a lady with the girls stick. That was not okay,
Speaker 1: It's like um baby predict or fight club. Yes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Also noted in this book are hookups speaking of where
Speaker 1: babies come from, there were many, many hookups. Uh. There
Speaker 1: is a passage which is entitled it is so stifling
Speaker 1: lee Hot, and it starts out being about how hot
Speaker 1: it is, which prompts everyone to leave their blinds and
Speaker 1: sliding doors open, and then it quickly she has to
Speaker 1: talking about a number of lovers sneaking away in the
Speaker 1: morning in full view of everybody thanks to the heat
Speaker 1: causing all of those doors to be open. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not the only place that that comes up in the book.
Speaker 1: From her list of depressing things, one of the ms
Speaker 1: is it is quite late at night and a woman
Speaker 1: has been expecting a visitor. Hearing finally a stealthy tapping,
Speaker 1: She sends her maid to open the gate and lies
Speaker 1: waiting excitedly. But the name announced by the maid is
Speaker 1: that of someone with whom she has absolutely no connection.
Speaker 1: Of all the depressing things, this is by far the worst,
Speaker 1: and from her list of hateful things, an admirer has
Speaker 1: come on a clandestine visit, but a dog catches sight
Speaker 1: of him and starts barking. One feels like killing the beasts. Really,
Speaker 1: A lot of the hateful things are about male visitors
Speaker 1: making noise or otherwise drawing attention to themselves, or acting
Speaker 1: in a way that was coarse or unseemly. None of
Speaker 1: this is really surprising considering that a lot of the
Speaker 1: interior walls in the palaces were basically paper partitions in
Speaker 1: bamboo screens. So while all of these hookups were happening
Speaker 1: and everyone knew that they were happening, they were also
Speaker 1: meant to be happening discreet, making the need for silence
Speaker 1: and discretion very important. So if you were a guy
Speaker 1: and you rattle the screen on your way out, people
Speaker 1: would be yes. Overall, the lists of depressing and hateful
Speaker 1: things are quite long, but big chunks of them are
Speaker 1: kind of mundane and a little bit petulant, and they
Speaker 1: sum out to Tracy describes it as they are out
Speaker 1: of salted caramel at Starbucks that today is the worst
Speaker 1: day ever. Like they're really just complaints about pretty mundane happenings. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the hateful things is one is just about
Speaker 1: to be told some interesting piece of news when a
Speaker 1: baby starts crying. They're kind of ridiculous and awesome and
Speaker 1: also ridiculous petulant, but there are also other much less
Speaker 1: awful uh things in them. One of the depressing things
Speaker 1: is a lying in room when the baby has died,
Speaker 1: so obviously that has a much greater emotional depth than
Speaker 1: just complaining about things like noise. Another is a lengthier
Speaker 1: description of someone who has gathered his family to wait
Speaker 1: with him on the day when the official appointments are made,
Speaker 1: but he does not get one, and they all gradually
Speaker 1: leave in ones and twos until he's all alone. So
Speaker 1: they were expecting good news and did not get it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are things on on the lists that are legitimately
Speaker 1: bad and not just kind of finding bad um. The
Speaker 1: unsuitable Things list, though, is particularly revealing of aristocratic attitudes
Speaker 1: about the lower classes. One of the unsuitable things is
Speaker 1: snow on the houses of common people. This is especially
Speaker 1: regrettable when moonlight shines down on it. This is because
Speaker 1: those common people and air quotes could not fully appreciate
Speaker 1: how lovely all of that was, and so therefore the
Speaker 1: moon shining on snow was wasted beauty, which is an
Speaker 1: offensive idea. It is well, it also sort of auto
Speaker 1: discredits writer like to say that it was wasted because
Speaker 1: she's enjoying it, you know. But it's not a poor
Speaker 1: person's house, Holly, It's still pretty. There's also love mentioned
Speaker 1: in this book, and things that cannot be compared. It
Speaker 1: goes from the relatively prosaic summer and winter, night and day,
Speaker 1: rain and sunshine too. When one has stopped loving somebody,
Speaker 1: one feels that he has become someone else, even though
Speaker 1: he is still the same person. The book also shows
Speaker 1: a lot of communicating with people through poetry. In many situations,
Speaker 1: direct communication was socially unacceptable, but exchanging poems was totally allowed,
Speaker 1: so people would veil what they wanted to say in
Speaker 1: poetry and send their thoughts that way. One of the
Speaker 1: lists in the book is also just a list of
Speaker 1: poetic subjects. Also, games and other amusements are mentioned, like
Speaker 1: backgammon or the Chinese board game Go or building a
Speaker 1: giant mountain of snow as high as they possibly could
Speaker 1: in winter, so kind of joyous fun activities. There are
Speaker 1: also many many descriptions of plants and flowers, so what's
Speaker 1: in bloom, what's growing? What the foliage looks like. Similarly,
Speaker 1: there are descriptions of beautiful fabrics, art, and clothing. There's
Speaker 1: really a huge focus on what is beautiful and what
Speaker 1: brings shown and gown delight, and a lot of these
Speaker 1: descriptions tie in closely, of course, to Japanese aesthetics. There's
Speaker 1: a a which is a sort of pathos or emotional
Speaker 1: response that comes from fading beauty, like scattering cherry blossoms
Speaker 1: or the fading noise of a bell, things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And there's also okashi, which relates to a more fleeting
Speaker 1: delight or pleasure. And the Pillow Book overall is more
Speaker 1: about okashi than aware. Yeah, if we've mentioned the Tale
Speaker 1: of Genji earlier, that one is more about the sad part,
Speaker 1: especially by the end um, and so as the comparison goes,
Speaker 1: this is sort of the happy elements of court life,
Speaker 1: mostly as opposed to the tragically sad, despairing ones that
Speaker 1: are more present in the Tale of Kenji. Maybe the
Speaker 1: most say show Negon East passage in This Whole Thing
Speaker 1: comes at the end of a passage about how much
Speaker 1: she loves the hototo gisu, which is a type of bird.
Speaker 1: She says, and I do not love the hot to
Speaker 1: gi suit alone. Anything that cries out at night delights me.
Speaker 1: Except babies. We have both the things that delight her
Speaker 1: and the fact that she could be kind of petty
Speaker 1: and the things that annoyed her. She seemed to not
Speaker 1: be big on the baby. And before we talk about
Speaker 1: the sort of circumstances that led to the end of
Speaker 1: this court life for showing a going, let's take a
Speaker 1: minute and talk about our sponsor. Now back to the
Speaker 1: story of Say shown agone. So sadly the story of
Speaker 1: Say shown a goon in her pillow book does not
Speaker 1: have a very happy ending. We talked about how Say
Speaker 1: Shanagon was in service to the Empress Taishi and Uh.
Speaker 1: The Empress had become consort to Emperor Ichiju when she
Speaker 1: was fourteen and he was ten, and during this period
Speaker 1: the Fujiwara clan was heavily influential in Japanese politics. Women
Speaker 1: from the Fujiwara clan would marry the emperor and then
Speaker 1: their fathers would rule as regents and chancellors. The emperor
Speaker 1: was still the emperor, but the Fujiwaras were really running
Speaker 1: the show. Yeah. Tihi's father, Fujiwara no Michi Taka, died
Speaker 1: during an epidemic in and with his death, he She's
Speaker 1: only real protection was her brother Koori Chika, but her
Speaker 1: father's brother, Michi Naga, wanted his own children in power
Speaker 1: and not his brother's children, and Michi Naga used his
Speaker 1: political while to ease the reins away from Korachika. Then Uh,
Speaker 1: Korachika wound up being exiled from the capital after an
Speaker 1: escalating misunderstanding with an ex emperor who Korachika had thought
Speaker 1: was making moves on his lady. So it was a
Speaker 1: big romantic misunderstanding uh and this left Hashi with no
Speaker 1: real backing at court, and it opened the door for
Speaker 1: Mitchi Naga to position his own daughter, Fujiwara no Akiko
Speaker 1: also known as Shoshi, as a new favorite to Emperor Ichijo.
Speaker 1: So with the Fujiwara clan lined up against him, even
Speaker 1: the Emperor could not really do much to help Taishi,
Speaker 1: especially since the Empress Dowager his own mother, also joined
Speaker 1: in encouraging him to favor show She instead. And even
Speaker 1: though it was unheard of for one emperor to have
Speaker 1: two empresses, Mitchi Naga successfully argued that Taishi and show
Speaker 1: She could have two different titles and two different roles
Speaker 1: in court. And that Emperor Ichijo was totally justified in
Speaker 1: having them both so show. She came to the Imperial
Speaker 1: Palace and was named second Empress in the year one thousand.
Speaker 1: Say Shaunaghan's own loyalty during this time was called into
Speaker 1: question because she had been fond of Meetingnaga before this
Speaker 1: whole business started. And that year Tay she moved to
Speaker 1: another palace because she was pregnant uh and this was tradition,
Speaker 1: and Tay she had spent large parts of her two
Speaker 1: other pregnancies elsewhere, but this time this all transpired while
Speaker 1: she was clearly being pushed aside at court. And on
Speaker 1: top of that, the other palace where she would normally
Speaker 1: have gone during a pregnancy had burned down, and instead
Speaker 1: she had to stay in the home of a senior steward,
Speaker 1: which obviously paled in comparison to a second palace that
Speaker 1: she could visit. Her ladies in waiting started to leave
Speaker 1: her service, and she ended up dying in childbirth, and
Speaker 1: she was only twenty four at the time. Most of
Speaker 1: Shanagan's actual writing of the Pillow Book happened during this
Speaker 1: period of instability, although it's hard to see that in
Speaker 1: the text, even if you already knew that part of
Speaker 1: story and are looking for it. So while a lot
Speaker 1: of the Pillow Book gives us a window into the
Speaker 1: life of Imperial Court during t She's glory days, it's
Speaker 1: not so much an actual reflection of the real political
Speaker 1: situation that was going on while Shaunagan was physically writing it.
Speaker 1: And say Shawnagon died around ten five, basically nothing is
Speaker 1: known about the time between when she left the court
Speaker 1: and when she died, although the lore is that she
Speaker 1: was lonely and miserable because she had been so catty
Speaker 1: and uh kind of petulant at court. In the rest
Speaker 1: of Japan, the Fujiwara clan's influence started to wane in
Speaker 1: the middle eleven hundreds. Then in eleven eighty five, one
Speaker 1: of the most powerful warrior clans called the Genji, defeated
Speaker 1: another powerful clan and also their main rivals, that hey k.
Speaker 1: The Genji then established the first Showgun government, and the
Speaker 1: Showgun military rule over Japan lasted until eighteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: In today, UH to sort of liken it to modern life,
Speaker 1: sometimes people like to say that shown Aging is really
Speaker 1: the first blogger UH. And they also sometimes like to
Speaker 1: say that the Pillow Book is the first tumbler, which
Speaker 1: makes a bit of sense. Yeah, considering how much trying
Speaker 1: to identify ancient concepts with modern yeah happening, considering how
Speaker 1: much of it is sort of random stuff put together
Speaker 1: and in no real order as she saw it, uh together. Um,
Speaker 1: and and kind of an amusing side note when when
Speaker 1: I the day that I started doing the research for
Speaker 1: this podcast, and you know, I typed, say, showing aging
Speaker 1: into my search bar, you know how like a Wikipedia
Speaker 1: result will come up to the right of your search results. Um,
Speaker 1: it was, you know, blah blah, say shown ago and
Speaker 1: blah blah. I wrote the Pillow Book. And then it
Speaker 1: said she was also kind of a b except it
Speaker 1: didn't say b h. That has since been edited out
Speaker 1: of the Wikipedia are too well, so it doesn't say
Speaker 1: that anymore. So this was probably because she was opinionated,
Speaker 1: and she teased people who got their etiquettes and ceremony wrong.
Speaker 1: She was really pretty scornful of the lower classes. And
Speaker 1: you know, her book is full of these lists of
Speaker 1: hateful and depressing and annoying things that a lot of
Speaker 1: people on Twitter would probably hashtag first world problems. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely speaking from a position of privilege yet being annoyed
Speaker 1: by things that are really not real issues. I had
Speaker 1: forgotten how how really a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: are in her list to like me, Like, it had
Speaker 1: been fifteen or so years since I read the whole book,
Speaker 1: and when I reread it, I I really I had
Speaker 1: forgotten how many of the lists of things are extremely
Speaker 1: funny to me. Yeah, they're one, they're hilarious viewed through
Speaker 1: a modern lens. But also it's just I can't help
Speaker 1: but picturing this woman just sitting there in the salon
Speaker 1: kind of recording these random things like, man, my gossip
Speaker 1: got interrupted. Yeah, and it becomes very very witty in
Speaker 1: its own And one of the translations about the uh,
Speaker 1: what you know, you're getting ready to hear something interesting
Speaker 1: is and then the baby starts crying. One of the
Speaker 1: other translations of it is that specifically, you were talking
Speaker 1: to the mother of the baby and she is about
Speaker 1: to tell you something interesting and her baby starts crying,
Speaker 1: which is even more like pointed in the whole Hatred
Speaker 1: of Babies. Um. If you are interested in reading this book,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend unless you are already really well steeped
Speaker 1: in Japanese culture and particularly Japanese culture during this period.
Speaker 1: I recommend getting one that has roughly as many notes
Speaker 1: as the book is long. Yeah, like UH. Mine that
Speaker 1: I have is edited by Ivan Morris, and it is
Speaker 1: almost the same length of text versus notes. Um. And
Speaker 1: it is that one also excludes some of the more
Speaker 1: really really mundane lists that are like lists of nouns.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a real one, but um, that
Speaker 1: one includes mostly the more evocative lists. So that is
Speaker 1: the story of say, shown a goon, and a little
Speaker 1: glimpse of what aristocratic imperial court life was like uh
Speaker 1: in Japan, while, as my medieval literature professor said, when
Speaker 1: I was in college, while Europe was having fleas and
Speaker 1: wearing skins. And on that note, do you also have
Speaker 1: a bit of listener mail for us? We're gonna do
Speaker 1: something a little different with listener mail today. We were
Speaker 1: taking a page out of the book of Katie and
Speaker 1: Sarah past hosts thing of Patty, similar listener mail encounter.
Speaker 1: We're gonna read these without the names on because I'm
Speaker 1: not in favor publicly shaming people, unlike say showing a goon.
Speaker 1: He would publicly shame you all day. So he wait
Speaker 1: a lot of mail about the podcast, and we read
Speaker 1: all of it, and we think about whether the criticism
Speaker 1: that people is leveling at us is something that we
Speaker 1: need to address, and we hear are three that are
Speaker 1: on the same subject. The first one is from our
Speaker 1: Facebook wall and it says, ken y'all possibly go in
Speaker 1: a different direction for a while, then look at this
Speaker 1: person who we think is interesting, particularly in his slasher
Speaker 1: struggle against oppression. It's getting a bit old, folks. The
Speaker 1: answer to that is, now, we really could not. But
Speaker 1: I did go back and look of the twenty most
Speaker 1: recent episodes when we got this note twelve we're about
Speaker 1: individual people, and three of those were two partyers, which
Speaker 1: meant that we talked about nine individual people in twenty episodes.
Speaker 1: Three of those struggled against adversity, or if you count
Speaker 1: Filot Farnsworth who struggled against the corporation. Uh. And really
Speaker 1: the bigger set of topics that you take, the smaller
Speaker 1: that proportion gets. So my feeling is that people who
Speaker 1: struggle against oppression are largely overlooked in history class and
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons that we talked about them
Speaker 1: on the podcast. Wow, Because, as we mentioned when you
Speaker 1: and I were discussing it, as we know, histories written
Speaker 1: by the victors so often, and those are not the
Speaker 1: impressed people. Know, the people who have the mouthpiece are
Speaker 1: usually the ones that weren't doing struggling not so we
Speaker 1: have heard those stories already. There's still valid stories, but
Speaker 1: we need to get to the ones that are on
Speaker 1: the other side of it. Yeah. The next two are
Speaker 1: are more directly tied in terms of what they are
Speaker 1: asking about. The first one says, what's with all the
Speaker 1: emphasis on gay, bisexual, transgender, etcetera history lately. I've been
Speaker 1: listening to these podcasts for years, but it seems like
Speaker 1: you have gotten very appreciate on this subject lately. Please
Speaker 1: remember that half of the country still holds traditional marriage
Speaker 1: as an ideal. That doesn't mean that we are haters,
Speaker 1: are homophobes, but we get enough of the love that
Speaker 1: dare not speak its name on the news and don't
Speaker 1: relish being bombarded with it in our pleasure listening. This
Speaker 1: is not our Facebook law. And there was further cindent,
Speaker 1: part of which said, I'm not necessarily saying to avoid
Speaker 1: all gay topics, but a little more odd activity would
Speaker 1: be nice, and then the other one says, I'm a
Speaker 1: longtime listener of the podcast that I've been listening since
Speaker 1: the beginning and have not missed a single episode. I've
Speaker 1: actually gone back and listened to at least a quarter
Speaker 1: of the episode the second time. But lately I find
Speaker 1: myself resisting the urge to skip a few of the
Speaker 1: newer ones. I've never gone out of my way to
Speaker 1: send a message that was not positive, but I feel
Speaker 1: like I should say something. I respectfully resent the very
Speaker 1: numerous podcast episodes lately that are related to gay people.
Speaker 1: Sorry if I don't use the politically correct word for this.
Speaker 1: I feel like gay people are always allowed to make
Speaker 1: their opinion very clear, so why can't a straight person
Speaker 1: I have an opinion to you? And that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: fair that gay people can always say what they want
Speaker 1: and are quick to accuse people, and then everyone else
Speaker 1: is expected to just keep quiet. And then she went
Speaker 1: on to talk about loving the podcast and sent us
Speaker 1: some captures. So I sort of have a few points
Speaker 1: on this. Number one is that, like I really did
Speaker 1: go back and look to say, are we overwhelmingly representing
Speaker 1: only one point of view? Um? And when we got
Speaker 1: these the number of episodes that were about gay people,
Speaker 1: it was like a tiny minority. We did have some
Speaker 1: listener mail. It was specifically related to our Jane Adams episode,
Speaker 1: and that happens with every episode that we have. We
Speaker 1: generally get listener listener mail about it that we follow
Speaker 1: up on at a later time, so that's really not
Speaker 1: out of the ordinary. It's also not really out of
Speaker 1: the ordinary for the podcast to talk about, um, the
Speaker 1: gay community, like that's been part of the podcast since always,
Speaker 1: so it is not a new thing talking about gay people,
Speaker 1: the gay community, and other marginalized groups. It's really not
Speaker 1: a new thing for the podcast. Like I just said,
Speaker 1: neither us doing episodes that are about people. Although I
Speaker 1: understand if you prefer to hear about historical events rather
Speaker 1: than individual people, that could become tiresome. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a matter of taste. But I kind of want to
Speaker 1: just put this out there. Number one is you can
Speaker 1: say anything you want that's allowed, but speech as consequences.
Speaker 1: So if we say things that are offensive to other people,
Speaker 1: people will call us on that, and that's the consequence
Speaker 1: of the speech that we have made. UM. If someone
Speaker 1: else says something that someone else finds offensive. That's the
Speaker 1: same rule. We also talk about a lot of different
Speaker 1: subjects on this podcast. We talk about gay people and
Speaker 1: straight people. We talk about religious people and atheists. We
Speaker 1: talked about married people and divorced people. We talk about
Speaker 1: capitalists who literally bought up tuberculosis santatoriums and tore them
Speaker 1: down so that people with tuberculosis could not go there,
Speaker 1: uh and impoverished people who died because of their own
Speaker 1: governments in action. We also talk about people who were
Speaker 1: celibate for religious and spiritual reasons, and people who had
Speaker 1: non monogamous relationships. We've talked about everyone from social workers
Speaker 1: to teachers and people who made atomic bombs. Frankly, when
Speaker 1: I am coming up with a new topic of a podcast,
Speaker 1: usually this first question question that I asked myself, is
Speaker 1: what have we not talked about lately? And I try
Speaker 1: to start there. It is anything, and and that is
Speaker 1: how we are trying to be objective, not by excluding
Speaker 1: any particular group of people or point of view in
Speaker 1: favor of other groups of people in points of view,
Speaker 1: but to select broadly from broad people and broad points
Speaker 1: of view and broad people in places and times and
Speaker 1: all of that. It's sort of like throwing a dart
Speaker 1: at the board of we're somewhere we haven't gone lately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: move there to that place. Yeah. So I empathize with
Speaker 1: people who find it offensive to hear about things that
Speaker 1: they don't agree with. I grew up in a very
Speaker 1: conservative household, very conservative community. I get that, and I empathize.
Speaker 1: But we are not going to discount whole swaths of
Speaker 1: the population and whole pieces of history because of the
Speaker 1: possibility of causing offense to the people. We're going to
Speaker 1: try to select diverse content to talk about in these subjects.
Speaker 1: That's basically what I have to say about that, all right,
Speaker 1: that is my dieter. Uh yeah, I mean you've said
Speaker 1: it all and better than I would. Again, you know,
Speaker 1: these are the people that didn't get talked about in
Speaker 1: history class because they were marginalized. So some of those
Speaker 1: are going to bubble up because those are stories that
Speaker 1: have not been told and should everybody's story. Elsa Lanchester
Speaker 1: made a great too, I'll loop it back to the podcast.
Speaker 1: A great comment once that every single person you meet
Speaker 1: probably has a really interesting history and an interesting life story,
Speaker 1: but we don't get to hear most of them. Uh
Speaker 1: So I'm always preaching it for anybody's and everybody's life
Speaker 1: story because there's always a nugget of really fascinating stuff,
Speaker 1: so open to all of them. Yes, so sometimes we
Speaker 1: will be talking about lots of different people and communities
Speaker 1: and times and places, all of that. That is our goal,
Speaker 1: and to represent all of those people fairly and compassionately,
Speaker 1: if sometimes making fun of their foibles, like when the
Speaker 1: fact that they're petulant, the fact that you're complaining about
Speaker 1: babies crying when your love is trying sneak out. Uh okay. So,
Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other topic, or tell us we are awful
Speaker 1: for what we just said. We're on Facebook at facebook
Speaker 1: dot com slash history class stuff and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: mist in History. Are tumbler is mist in history dot
Speaker 1: tumbler dot com, and we are also on Pinterest. Our
Speaker 1: email addresses History podcast at Discovery dot com. If you
Speaker 1: would like to learn more about another element of Japanese
Speaker 1: culture and one that was really getting its start during
Speaker 1: the time period we talked about, you can come to
Speaker 1: our website and search the word geisha and you will
Speaker 1: find how geisha work. You can learn all that and
Speaker 1: a whole lot more at our website, which is how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. Because it has stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital
Speaker 1: audio books and spoken word entertainment. Audible has more than
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Speaker 1: to your iPod or MP three player. Go to audible
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