00:10
All right, so I was starting to talk about this in the previous episode where I was telling you how
I have a huge gap in sort of formal education of history because, well, it's twofold. One, because
Japan has a very long history, and two, because I kept moving around to different schools in,
you know, history-educating period of my life. So that didn't help. But just because it's funny,
let me tell you. So I'm not counting any of the elementary school history stuff that we did. I'm
sure we did something, but these were more play than actual sit down, learn, right? And in my
first year of middle school in Japan, 中一の時, which is... I was 13, right? And that's when we
started what looks like sort of a traditional history class. And the classic template for
history education in Japan goes, you go way back when into sort of prehistoric, almost,
peoples of Japan who like migrated from China and start populating the Japanese islands. And
you start from Jomon Zudai, I think that's when they start defining era. And based on sort of,
you know, different artifacts that are excavated, and like this, you know, ceramic patterns and
things like that. And so you do that for like, first semester of first trimester, because my
first trimester, because my school was three semesters of the 中一, and then you move on,
spend a little bit more time in the following era. And because after like, and there's like,
you know, a couple of events that are like significant and symbolic for each era, but like,
nothing much really happened, because there's not that much recorded history until...
Fair. A lot might have happened, but also, who knows?
Yeah, exactly. So we then quickly go to Heian Zudai, which is what the current NHK Taiga drama
is based on, right? I mean, that's the middle of the Heian period, which is a really long period,
03:01
if I remember right. And that's when like, people started having fictions and novels that are like,
actually in the recorded history, people have a better understanding of how people lived at that
time, which, like the word Heian suggests, seem pretty peaceful, to my eye, at least, like, you
know, not no major wars, some famine, like typical middle centuries, just a little famine, it's fine,
just a little famine here and there. And, you know, maybe some, maybe some epidemic of some sort
of like the diseases. I mean, people die was super young anyway. So like, it didn't make that
difference. A set of historians called it Heian period. And they were like, it was just it was
just more peaceful than some of the other. No, I would offend a lot of people if I say that.
Maybe. We're not historians. Don't at us. Don't at us. And also, I'm pulling this out of my poor,
poor brain on Friday night. So forgive me if I get things wrong. I mean, this is like middle school
first year. Nobody's gonna like be like, oh, this is the perfect memory of history. Go on. But I do
remember, I do remember when it ended. In my in my history of learning history in Japan, which was
Kamakura era. Kamakura is like 10th century, 11th century, something like that. And then that's when
like the samurai warriors, like the bushi, like the warriors started to get have a lot more power
in politics. Before that, the politics were centered around the emperor and the aristocrats.
And now people with arms started having power in politics. And basically, my Japanese history
education abruptly ended there. Because then I was put into a school in Singapore, right? We moved
Singapore, and it's an international school. So like no one, it's going to teach vaguely world
history, but it's a very Western centric history. Anyway, the world history, I don't know what's
the technical term, but I feel like when people think world history, they're mostly only talking
about Europe. And yeah, maybe, maybe Turkey a little bit. But like, just to sprinkle some like,
you know, non Western in there. We can only go this far. That's, that's, that's as far as they go.
Yeah, when you said world history, I was like, that that brings so many questions to mind,
because I do remember, quote, unquote, world history classes. I could not say that they were,
06:01
you know, maybe the most diverse range, right? They covered European related things and the
interactions that European and later the US might have had with the countries that vaguely existed
around. And like all of the colonies of Europe, maybe? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's how you travel
the world. You just go to all the colonies and listen to their histories. So exactly. This is
sarcasm for everyone out there. Please continue. So yeah, so going from like 10th, 11th century
Japan, straight into World War One, I remember having to suddenly learn about like trench wars,
which again, I up until that point, I don't even know if I knew what World War One was like World
War Two, you know, we get drilled in as Japanese, you know, kids, but like World War One, I was like,
when? How is this even? How many years ago was that? You know, I feel like I didn't know anything
about it. And mind you, this is still middle school, right? So we like just scratched the surface
of history education as far as history education went, you know. And then in high school,
of the same sort of like international school system, I was given a choice to pick a subject
in humanities. And it was a choice from history, geography, economics, and business, I think,
business and organization. Wow, what thrilling options. I know, thrilling. Did I, I might be
missing one or two other things. But they were like, those were basically the main ones. And
yeah, I'm getting the feeling. So okay, at this point, I'm like two years into full time English
speaking environment. Still rust, like still a lot to learn from. I just finished my ESL portion,
still like huffing and puffing at every class, right? And of course, I'm gonna go for the ones
that has the most numbers and least amount of essays. To me, that was business. Okay, yeah,
yeah. Oh, like I can balance the balance sheet. I know how to do that. And, you know, but do I
want to write like, you know, 10 page essay on? I don't even know, like some random historical
events? Like, no, I cannot just don't want to write any more essays than I needed to have.
And so so for the four years of high school, I completely neglected history, right? And then in
college, even though I went to liberal arts school, again, I had a loophole again, I didn't actually
have to take history. What I did to cover historical studies was I took history of philosophy.
09:11
And so I just studied a bunch of history, philosophy, and not history, history. Yeah.
So so so that's how I ticked the box of this liberal arts requirement in history. So basically,
between ages 14 to 22, I did zero history education of any kind.
And people gave me a lot of slack, because I you know, moved around a lot. I know a little like
at this point, I have lived in us for like five years. So I know like some of the major events
that people keep referring to in pop culture and elsewhere. But I still don't really know.
Any of the geography of US history, I don't really know why certain events are way big of a deal for
Americans, then, you know, I'm like things I've never heard of. Right? Yeah. And yeah, of course.
But like, those were just not a forefront of my thoughts, not, you know, caring about it. Yeah.
And it changed. When I started this, to listen to this podcast, the Japanese history podcast,
I keep talking to and everyone who's listening to this probably knows the Koten Najio. And
that's when I started to be like, oh, you know, like, I, I was in a phase of reading,
like becoming aware of what I missed out in my like, education. So I was like, kind of in a
mindset of like, you know, now that I have a little bit more bandwidth, like, let me kind of
absorb like things I should probably know as like a 20 something year old. And yeah,
yeah, I understand. And that's when I started listening. And they did exactly that. What your
US history class, I think taught you, you know, they didn't claim they're not historians, right?
They're not they're not claiming expertise. They do a lot of research, though. And they take they
have their own take. And they always remind the listener, this is, we try to be balanced,
we try to be neutral in some way, shape, or form. But like, these are our take what we think is
interesting to you listeners, you know, elements of the history, and we're going to try and bring
in as much fact as much, you know, factual context, so that it makes sense. And it's not just our
opinions, right? But history, inherently requires interpretation, which is, you know,
requires your own opinion and your own lens to look at things. And, and through their lens, I
12:00
found sort of ways to interact and engage with history of a huge kind, like it's, you know,
it's the the quote, unquote, world history, also the stuff that I didn't know anything about,
or like ancient Greek to like World War One, Russo-Japanese War, I also didn't know much about
and things like that. And it's not just like a war scale events like they sometimes focus on
individual as well, like, what happened to like, on Sullivan, and Helen Keller, or like,
what happened to Gandhi, right? Like, and they really do a good job of mixing this like
macroscopic and microscopic sort of lens in and out, zooming in and out of history, and
all the while sort of, you know, keeping it a pretty playful perspective on how they see
their history with. And the cool thing about it is they have researched so much of history already,
they have so like, their baseline historical knowledge is so high, that they see connection
in places that I would have never guessed. They like, frequently comment on things like,
oh, this, do you remember when we talked about when we talked about this end of Edo period?
summarized behavior, this is so similar to what happened to like ancient Greek when like Caesar
was leading the army, you know, things like that. And I find that so interesting and engaging. And
yes, I think these are kind of the fun that you only get to have once you get through the grind
work of the baseline sort of, you know, like the initial build up.
Yeah, you're, there's something like, you have to either build a foundation, and or it's building up
that not just context, but like the volume, the abundance of examples and perspectives that you
can start drawing links between them. Right? Yeah. And I think that that's, that's what intuition
is, right? Like, it's when you see the connections in otherwise, or maybe not obviously connected
things. But to you, in your own unique, you know, wiring of your brain, it seems connected. And,
and that's when the sort of like, you know, spark of connection happens and thought happens. And
that's sort of like a seed, a beginning of your own perspective.
I think what you're arriving at is the need for better continuing education, and informed
15:06
sort of trainings of teachers. There is an example in the back of my brain.
I'm not gonna bring it up yet. Don't bring it up.
That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening. And find us on x at Ego de Science,
that is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C. See you next time.
