For anyone interested in castles, emperors, and theme parks, Ran Zwigenberg and my article on the modern history of Fushimi Momoyama Castle in Kyoto has just come out from Japan Review. www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/japa...

I just came across this samurai armour that seems to have been produced in the 19th century by modifying and decorating a recent French armour. The cuirass seems to be the same type as in the colour image. The armour is held by the Royal Armouries in Leeds. royalarmouries.org/collection/o...

It's a wonderfully strange site! When I last went in 2023, they had a really good exhibition on the modern history of the castle. The excellent catalogue had this photo of Umeko and the ferris wheel on the cover. It's great that more and more places are starting to engage with their modern history.

If you'd visited in your youth you could have visited Umeko (1947-2009), the Thai elephant who spent most of her life in the castle grounds. And when Umeko was young, arriving at Odawara in 1950, there was a ferris wheel on the ramparts before they rebuilt the keep from concrete in 1960.

Working on a project and rediscovered this wonderful photo of a group of samurai posing on and around the Sphinx in 1864 as part of their tour around the world. Image from Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_...

The exhibition also reminded me of this spectacular football kit collaboration between the William Morris Gallery and Walthamstow FC last year. www.woodstreetwalls.co.uk/walthamstow-...

It was also interesting to see mention of the designer Christopher Dresser, who spent time in Japan in the 1870s, subsequently producing a book on Japan. The frontispiece and opening lines are a thing to behold.

I went to the William Morris exhibition at York Art Gallery, and was especially interested in the influence of Japonisme on Morris and other designers. The mix of medievalism and Orientalism that was prominent at the time is evident in many of the works. www.yorkartgallery.org.uk/exhibition/t...

This looks like a wonderful exhibition by Shisamu Iwase. The line in the image is taken from the 17th-century samurai text Hagakure, adapted to read "The way of business is found in death." Now on at Alter Space in London: thealter.space/exhibitions/

The museum was closed under the US Occupation in 1945 and used by an insurance company before reopening as a museum in 1986. This article looks at the evolution of the Yushukan and its various roles over the past 150 years, from its origins in the 1870s to the present day.

The original building collapsed in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, and was rebuilt from steel-reinforced concrete in the early 1930s. This was soon joined by a new National Defense Hall next door for exhibiting the latest military technology.

The Yushukan was opened in 1882 as Japan's first Western-style museum, and was one of the first purpose-built military museums in the world. It was built by an Italian architect to resemble a European castle, in line with wider building trends at the time.

Castles depicted: Matsuyama, Ogaki, Kochi, Himeji 3/3

Castles depicted: Okayama, Nagoya, Inuyama, Osaka 2/3

I recently came across this fantastic collection of prints of Japanese castles by Hashimoto Okiie from 1944. The book is "Nihon no shiro" and available online. Castles depicted: Hirosaki, Hikone, Komoro, Chiyoda (Edo) 1/3 www.dh-jac.net/db1/books/re...

Those interested in histories of drugs and Japan may be interested in our new volume, including some Open Access content. The contributions in Drugs and the Politics of Consumption in Japan examine this history from the early modern period to the 21st century.
brill.com/edcollbook/t...

It's certainly an eclectic mix of objects. The other tank, in front of the National Defense Hall in the first photo, seems to be a British Mark IV from 1918. This is an earlier picture of it on the other side of the Yushukan. It's got the same paint scheme as this one: tank-afv.com/ww2/jap/tank...

I've been looking at prewar photos of the Yushukan military museum and National Defense Hall at Yasukuni Shrine, and one of the most prominent displays is giant acoustic devices. They are apparently early sonic aircraft detection equipment, known as "war tubas" or "sound trumpets" 1/2