Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 409 - The Anglo-Satsuma War

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Check out TWOAPW: https://www.worstpossible.world/ PREORDER JOE'S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Highlands-Burn-Foundling-Brigade-Saga-ebook/dp/B0GSG5CNXX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=QWHSPAADI07D&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.uLEY0I7D6t0IC9GWsF7SH1FKEgKqsqTLmV4PQ_lLi-wVUCYgTqIv0BWd9_-x3VzP.xn7v2CqU5MjngXmmSbYvVGsY_fxkvgsz-LA2tkhHHTs&dib_tag=se&keywords=joseph+kassabian&qid=1774247705&s=digital-text&sprefix=%2Cdigital-text%2C176&sr=1-1 GET LIVE SHOW TICKETS: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-29th-may-tickets-1985443952308 GET LIVESTREAM TICKETS: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-london-29th-may-tickets-1985443952308 Joe is joined by AJ, Brian, and Josh from the Worst of All Possible Worlds to talk about the time a British trader got murdered by Samurai for being an asshole and sparked a war between the British and the Satsuma Domain. SOURCES: De Lange, William. The Namamugi Incident: The Murder that Sparked a War Totman, Conrad. The collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868 Satow, Ernest. A Diplomat in Japan Rennie, David Field. The British Arms in North China and Japan

Hey everyone, Joe here. Me, Tom, and Nate are all going to be live May 29th in London at the Rich Mix. So get your tickets and come down and see us. It's going to be a great show. We're going to have some new merch, some shirts, some pins, maybe some book stuff because it coincides the launch of my book, The Highlands Burn. And if you can't make it, that's okay. We're going to be live streaming it. Check out our show notes. Make sure you click on the right link for live show and live stream tickets, whichever one you need, and get your tickets now. The Highlands Burn. My debut fantasy novel releases May 29th and is now available for digital pre-order. You can find the link in the show notes wherever it is you're listening to this. Just like this show, this book is a

completely independent production. To the crack of rifles and the acrid stench of sports, sorcery, a sudden invasion sweeps through the highlands of the Confederation, and Syatt's peaceful village life breaks with the dawn. A sole survivor amid the smoking ruins of all that he held dear, Siyah must make a choice. Is pursuing revenge against the mercenaries that took everything from him worth becoming one himself? As escape pushes him to the gruff embrace of the foundling brigade, he must learn to tread a path between his need to understand why his people were targeted for destruction and the new responsibilities of his soldiers life. Even as each new encounter with the horrors of battle force him to confront the terrible

cost of his oath. Before long, the shifting fog of war casts old certainties into a haze of doubt, while the stuff of legend seems as clear as day. And Syatt finds himself drawn into a much larger conflict that he could possibly imagine. Hello and welcome to the Lions at By Donkey's podcast, the only military history podcast in the entire world. I'm Joe and joining me today are the boys for the worst of all possible world's podcast.

Josh, AJ and Brian, fellas. Welcome to the show. I'm Josh. I'm AJ. I'm Brian. Hi. I got all you guys here because spending eight hours podcasting together before was not enough. No. Soon to be two more.

You couldn't get enough of us and we couldn't get enough of you. The great Michigan treaty or whatever. I don't know. Jolenium continues apace. This is the month of lions led by Tawawapu. The worst of all possible lions. Yay! Y'all motherfuckers just can't get rid of me.

It's true. Welcome to the payroll, Joe. He's still in my house. It's fine. I only need a closet and I can just sleep leaning against the wall. But why do you sleep upside down? That's the bigger question for me. Well, Joe is a Dracula, you see.

It helps with my digestion. That's why we had to invite you into the house every time. Regular sinner you. Weirdly the last time we had you guys on the show, we ended up talking about a whole bunch of white dudes fucking around in Korea. Yeah. Getting a bayonet in the wiener. That's correct.

Today we're going to talk about a whole bunch of white dudes fucking around in Japan. Hey! I promise I didn't plan this. Like, you're not like the guys I go to whenever I have an episode that happens in Asia somewhere. This just happens this way. Is there going to be anything made out of ice this time around? Because I did have a great time with that aircraft carrier made of ice. Unfortunately not.

Though I do believe if you gave the samurai swords made out of ice, that would be a lot more fun than what we're going to talk about today. Oh, sure. Also, one of the Ws in Tuopua stands for Weeaboo. So I think we're good. I think both of them do. Now, fellas, I've gathered you all here to talk about a very strange part of history. A time when a murder charge turned into a British military bombardment on a reoccurring character on our show here. The Setsuma Domain of Japan.

That's because we're talking about something that has a lot of different names. Like the Richardson Affair is one. But we're going to call it the Anglo-Satsuma War because I feel like that's the best possible title for it. But first, the Bishito Code of Context. Of course. Always. No, always. I know you guys are all Japan heads. I think Brian is the biggest

Weebu of all of us. Am I? Yeah, I think. I don't play Shin Megami Tensei games. Yeah, no, I think it's probably me. I don't know, but I have actually seen a full Boon Raku play. Right. Live.

And three no plays. I feel like you got us all beat on that one. Yeah, yeah. I've only seen the no play that is in the game, Yakuza like a dragon. Does that count? Because in that case, I've seen one as well. It's just a little one.

It's just at the very beginning, right? Isn't it? No, it's, it's cool. Yeah, I've never played the Yakuza games. Oh, you'd love them. You'd love them. You would absolutely love them. There's just so many of them.

Like, am I supposed to play them all? Oh, no, no. Just start at like a dragon. You'll be fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good entry point. The other ones are good. Okay.

I know a lot of people are going to be mad at me as I said to skip them. But let's be honest here, best place to start is like a dragon. Yeah, well, it's also, it's a turn-based RPG where all the other ones are more action-focused. So I think you'd have a better time with like a dragon. Our story brings us to the Japanese era called the Bacomatsu, an era where the isolationist collection of feudal domains that was Japan was forced to open its doors to foreigners by the barrel of American cannons in 1854, thanks to Commodore Matthew Perry, a man whose name never fails to elicit a little laugh for me,

whatever I have to say it. Yeah. This is a point where I have to bring up the fact. that AJ and I are big fans of a 1970s Broadway musical about Perry's expedition to Japan called Pacific Overtures

that I think partially dramatizes or sort of has an analogous event to the one that we're discussing today towards the end of the musical. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have an idea for everybody

which unfortunately we can't do anymore. We have a version of that but Matthew Perry plays Matthew Perry. Oh, Joe, I have some really bad news about- Don't ruin this for me. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. All of his lines are delivered by like trumpets. He doesn't speak in the play. Like in peanuts? Like with the mion. It's not muted. It's not a muted trumpet. But yeah,

it's like a birew. He's depicted like a kabuki lion and he has this big mane and he does this high stepping. It's great. It's a fucking great musical and they filmed it. The jazz Commodore. Is that really what happens? I've never seen Pacific Overture.

Yes. It is really what happens. He is sort of. depicted as just a great beast that can't be tamed. Yeah, and in the background, they have super titles that read, could I have any more trumpets? Could I be any more of a Commodore? RIP, homie.

Anyway, as we've established before on the show, there had already been foreigners in Japan for a very long time, namely the Portuguese, who first showed up in the 1500s, selling guns, spreading Christianity, and of course, syphilis. Yes. Yay. What's

Catholicism, baby. It and syphilis go hand in hand. In Japan, they called it the Portuguese disease. That is correct. The portia disease. It sounds like something you get by sitting out on your pork, but... However, they flew a bit too close to the sun. Mostly because of that last part, the whole Christianity thing.

Yeah. Yeah. This resulted in a long enough timeline with the Shimabora Rebellion, and we did a series on that a while back. And then the aftermath, of the failed Christian rebellion in Shimabara, the Tokugawa shogunate outlawed Christianity, ejected the Portuguese,

and instituted a strict edict of isolationism and seclusion, other than a very small trading port they gave to the Dutch. They like to keep in touch. Thank you very much. They invented Dutch kabuki, as we've talked about before on the show, which is just kabuki and blackface, I think is what Tom and I landed on.

Sounds right now. Joe, I do feel like we do have to like tie you down and make you listen to Pacific Overtures because it's like, it's so good. It's such a history nerd play. Like you're like, oh yeah, it's a fucking Broadway musical, but it's so much weirder than that. I'm sold already. You had me sold when you said Matthew Perry.

Oldie speaks in trumpet noises. Like, yeah, I'm in. I'm fucking in. You're a good man, Commodore Matthew Perry. You're the kind of reminder we need. What? You're doing a Charlie Brown job. You can't just do your good man Charlie Brown reference without any context whatsoever.

Oh, my lord. It's because the trumpets. It's just, it's just, you exist on a different timeline than Josh and I and every other person on Earth. People ask me to guest on their podcasts and they wonder why I'm never a second guest on most podcasts. Since you're bringing Matthew Perry into the world of the peanuts. Yes. Does that mean technically the American fleet to Japan? could have been defeated if someone simply moved the football.

Absolutely. Oh, okay. A hundred percent. But then they'd have to reckon with a dog flying on a red dog house and like shooting them down. And they did not have aerial technology at the time. Yeah, I feel like they would really have surprised the show. Yeah. I really like this idea of taking down Commodore Perry by building a treaty house on stilts on top of to Tommy Mats that just has a single football in the middle of it that they snatch away at the last second.

Yeah. Yeah. Americans have no choice but to try to kill. ticket. It's like if you put your hand up to a white person, they have to go for a high five. We simply must. You have no choice. The Japanese endeavored to isolate the Dutch that they allowed in, confiding them to a man-made island accessible only via a small bridge that they were not allowed to leave. The Japanese who entered the area kind of did so with the constant overwatch of government overseers, making sure the Dutch didn't contaminate them with Protestantism,

I suppose. Yeah, this is extremely based. I'm sorry to say. Yeah, no, they had the right idea here. A lot of the other policies, not so great, but like keep the Dutch firmly under control, because they'll start eating your prime ministers. Like, you know, it's true. You got to keep them away from any levers of power. They'll start digging canals. They'll build boarding schools. Wood shoes for everybody. That's actually why I was sent here by the Japanese shogunate is to keep the Dutch in check.

They don't know that I'm a secret Japanese agent. They have no idea. But like, it's also like not a joke. Like, I, you can just look at what they did to Malaysia. It's crazy. Or to northwestern New Mexico. I mean, they are, yeah, I do like this idea of like a duel between different styles of wooden shoe. The Japanese wooden shoe and the Dutch wouldn't shoe.

Yeah, both sides sit down on their butt and they just kind of kick at one another. You have to cover the top. There's so much shame on the top of the foot. You have to cover it. I can see your toes. You got your dogs out. It's disgusting. It's disgusting.

And this is how things kind of went down until Matthew Perry and his gunboat showed up. After America forced Japan to open, other countries were quick to get their own feet and the ever-growing collection of doorways. I assume with dogs securely in. Or else the Baja men would be like, who let them out? We're bringing in an expert about this. His name is Baja, and there's several of them. Yippie I-O! They scream as they burst into the room.

everybody's having a ball. Play the first version of Who Let the Dogs Out on Shammieson. I can hear it. You know, I feel like I haven't laid out what my Weeb credentials are since you guys already have. And I still believe that you

significantly outrank me. However, I am brought back to when I was living in Armenia and I would go to Trivia night at my local bar. I believe it was on Wednesday. I don't remember anymore. And one of the, the topics for trivia was

kind of hear the sound of an instrument and be able to name exactly what it is. And he played a shamisen and I was the only one in the entire bar. Really? He was like, I know what that is. That's such a distinctive sound. Yeah. Well, maybe not the Caucasus.

So I might be third place on this podcast when it comes to Webda, but Armenia, I'm the king of that shit. Anyway, In a month, the Russian envoy was ruling into Japan trying to get their own treaties. And since this is the same time frame as the Crimean War and everything that came with it, the British were shortly behind the Russians, with nobody wanting to be the person that allowed someone else to gain more influence with themselves with the Shogun.

As you can imagine, this caused one hell of a government blow up within the courts of the Shogun. After all, pretty much everything that they considered how their government works, and Japanese society had worked for hundreds of years, changed in the blink of an eye. This caused a fracture within the court. Those who were connected to the shogunate prior to the very major battle called Sekigahara, which will eventually do a series in the future. These guys are called the Fudai and then the ones that were connected to the shogunate after the battle, the Tozama. The Fudai were the old school power.

They've held virtually all of the administrative positions throughout the Edo period. You know, they're manning Shogunit era DMV offices. the worst government jobs ever. All of them are solid positions of authority. And the Tozama's are outsider lords. They have no real connection to the Shogunate family or otherwise. They really don't have any administrative position within the Edo government. They just kind of sit on their property, pay taxes, and do the duties that they're told to do.

The Tozama happened to be the faction of the government that saw using these new outsiders to increase their own power. you know, modern weapons, modern trading, modern education, they all saw this as a massive advantage. This included buying steam-powered warships from the Dutch, opening a naval school, and an infantry training school. Meanwhile, ports like Yokohama, Kobe and Ado and others would open to act as foreign trading posts. It goes without saying, though I should explain, that all of these agreements with these foreign nations are wildly lopsided. Wait, hold on. You're telling me that the Dutch did a dirty deal? Come on. you've got to be joking.

The Dutch, the Americans, the Russians, the Portuguese come back. The French. The French are there. The English. They're all in a musical number together in Pacific overtures. They're all doing everything

they can to fleece Japan. Yeah. Of anything they have that's worth fucking two cents. Well, and then the Russians are going a step further and being like, okay, we're also going to take a whole bunch of islands too. I hope you don't mind.

because we want them. We have giant cannons right outside, so we're just going to go ahead and grab those islands from you. Spoil alert for a few decades, this does not go great for the Russians. Nope. I will say you could always tell

the business leaders who had taken the deal with the Dutch because all of a sudden their wooden shoes had tops to them. And they're like, hey, wait a minute, I feel like maybe, where are your dogs? My dogs are secure. Stap, stab, stab, stab, tap, stab.

Toshiro, what happened to your dogs? And then, yeah, you're just assaulted and murdered. I'm putting on my Dutch kimono that's made by G-star raw with my, like, wooden clogs. Getting my top nut cut into a weirdly floppy side-shaven thing that all Dutchmen wear. Everybody's calling me boss now. Does people wear G-star a lot? Is that, is that a... Oh, oh, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, baby. Yeah, it looks ridiculous. It's not a good look. know why I didn't realize until now that G-Star was a Dutch brand. I find that shit so hideous. Yep. It's not a good look. No, it's not. Every single Dutch man I've ever met is all dressed like middle management of some unknown corporation. Same haircut, same like five pieces of clothing. Now that's like you can imagine when someone goes into the Dutch Training Academy and come out, that's what they're wearing, but as a kimono. The kimono equivalent. A kimono made of raw denim.

That's actively disintegrating, yeah. Japan gets absolutely fleeced, imports are duty-free, and they rapidly flood the market, but the real damage comes from the outflowing of precious metal. Like virtually every country in the world back then, Japan's currency was backed by precious metals, namely gold and silver, pegged to an exchange rate of one for five, which is incredibly high. That is a large amount of gold per actual coinage, right? Yeah. Foreign currencies back then, specifically the American dollar and the British pound were pegged closer to 1 to 15. Oh, wow. So this meant that the show and its currency was actually worth much more than everybody else is in

precious metal. That's crazy. But Japan also had significantly less of this precious metal than they did and obviously not a worldwide market. So it's kind of like going into a forest and no other person has ever been in and you're like a woodsman. You're going to make out like a bandit. And that's what happens with the Americans and the British. Because thanks to the unequal trade agreements,

it meant that traders could trade in Japanese currency, get Japanese currency in hand, and then walk over to a counter and demand the exchange of precious metals for how much it was worth. Right. because this always blows my mind. Speaking of somebody who is very used to Fiat currency,

which we all know is a sham for the global New World Order. He keeps all of his currency in a tiny little Fiat car that is just outside of his house. Keeping all of my savings in different models of Fiat has been very difficult. But just the idea that you could walk up to a counter and be like, this is a promissory note.

Yeah, give me gold. By virtue of the fact that I have $1, you owe me five gold. What is the Skyrim? Here's the thing. I'm walking into every Japanese business. I'm putting a pot on their head and I'm just stealing everything around them

and then taking the pot off and leave it. Which is great. But then after that, they call you a thief, which is a bit of an issue. And then if you go back into the shop one more time, then they electrocate your death. I'll have you know that I'm not a thief.

I'm a simple country merchant that came over on a ship to steal all your stuff. It's different. I'm an entrepreneur. I was an entrepreneur until I took an arrow to the knee. I used to be a merchant like you until I took a samurai sword to the face. Oh no! As you could imagine, a whole bunch of people doing this collapses the Japanese currency.

Humongous economic shocks. But speed running the economic death spiral of a country was it the only thing that foreigners brought with them? They also brought cholera. Yay! Which doesn't really play a huge part to our story today, but I have to bring it up, because cholera is like an employee of ours. He's on every episode. He's on the payroll.

Yeah, I have to pay cholera. It's really weird. Thankfully, the Portuguese disease, not on the payroll, just occasionally shows up every now and again. But once he shows up, you can't get rid of him, you know?

Yeah, that's true. My nose. Weirdly, this podcast is brought to you by syphilis. You have a Catholic on. What are you going to expect? I'm going to give you syphilis. Now, this spreads like wildfire, which pairs very nicely with an accidentally man-made famine, also mostly caused by a combination of drought and economic exploitation.

With all of this, political violence becomes commonplace as more pro-modernization lords and the retainers kill traditionalists. And traditionalists lash out and kill pro-modernization crowd. Mostly worried about losing their generation's grip on power, this kind of just becomes a tit-for-tat, butchering in the courts across the land. And kind of going back to when we talked about the Setsuma Rebellion, a lot of these guys come from the Setsuma domain. For a very quick rundown to Satsuma Rebellion, it is kind of sort of what they modeled the last samurai on.

Yeah. Is a traditionalist lord who rejects foreign influence and things like that and tries to take over the government, kind of. Because Sago Taka Bore believed he was going to empower the emperor by rebelling against him. Right. To understand like this point in history, yes, there is this emperor who is like the supreme power and everything,

but he's not actually the supreme power. It's the shogun who are in charge, who lead their own fiefdoms and everything. The shogun is the military dictator of Japan. And under him are the feudalords known as daimyo. And the emperor himself, technically having absolute power, is considered too pure.

Yeah. To rule upon man. He's also like a child, so there's always that. He can be. There's no age limit. It's kind of fun. Now, the Satsuma are confusing because now we've talked about this under Satsuma Rebellion, but they're often framed as being against Western influence in Japan by any and all means,

meaning no guns, no cannons, nothing. But that's not true. They were mostly against the unfair treaties and the political influence at Westerners had. They were completely on board with absorbing technology and training to further their cause. Yeah. The Satsuma loved guns and they loved steam powered warships. Who doesn't?

Come on. Saigo Takabori carried a rifle until he was out of ammo. Now, a lot of their political differences came down to were worried about the proliferation of firearms because it's going to make commoners equal with us. Yeah. Oh, I see.

But they were still cool with guns if they needed to be. You know what I mean? It wasn't a bunch of them using bows and arrows as a political choice. That's very interesting parallels, obviously, to the way that the ruling class has treated the right to bear arms throughout time, you know? Yes. Same thing in the United States. Yeah. You'll find your rights rapidly taken away if those rights, in fact, can affect change.

Yeah. You see this a lot in, like, especially like older like Kurosawa movies and stuff. Everyone will be doing their samurai shit in Yojimba or whatever. One guy is fighting with a big hammer. and then a dude just shows up with a gun and the whole game changes. Like, especially as I'm sure you guys have explored over on your show

because it's the only good media podcast I've ever listened to. Hey! But like in, especially Corosawa films of which I am a huge fan of, firearms are often portrayed as the stand-in for the possible colonization of Japan. Yeah.

For obvious reasons. It's like the cholera or syphilis. It's like, oh, shit, we're not going to be able go back from this. And there's a romanticism of like now our culture is dying because of this deadly Western influence. And Saigo Takabori is oftentimes put on a pedestal about that as being a standard bearer, the traditional way of life. Cannot be further from the truth. Towards the end of the of the rebellion, he wasn't using guns anymore, but that's just because they ran out of bullets.

That wasn't a choice. That was a necessity. Oh no, our island nation is resource poor. thankfully will never fall for this pretfall ever again. They've taken our gold. It's just like those are the two things you always learn, right? Have enough ammo and pay your troops. Those are like the two things. Yes. If you are an isolated islandation with no oil reserves,

maybe don't spark more with half of the earth. What's the worst that could happen? Yeah. Twice. Twice. It's getting completely exploded. Whoops. Now, the set.

Setsuma benefited wildly from these Westerners because Westerners liked dealing with the Satsuma. They were strong. They had a lot of polling court. Yeah. But the Satsuma fucking hated them. And while it wasn't some kind of Satsuma edict to hunt down and murder Westerners, a lot of the people who did kill Westerners happened to be samurai from the Satsuma domain. When the Shogunate attempted to purge a lot of these traditionalists attempting to assert the Shogun's power.

to sign deals with foreign powers, because that is a lot of what the argument came down to. The traditionalists who are against the treaties use them as fodder for there being a restoration of imperial power. This would eventually be called the Meiji Restoration in a few years. But they're like, well, the Shogun has kind of given away his power by signing these deals. Also, why does he even have the power to do this? He's not the emperor. Right.

So the Shogun wanted to reassert his monopoly on power over the bickering feudal lords by purging them. This could be through exile or murder, but Satsuma Samurai struck back, murdering the guy who happened to be the Shogun's closest advisor, who was largely blamed with personally signing the treaties with the Americans and coming up with the idea of the purge at all. The government struck back exiling and murdering a lot of these guys. One of them was Saigo Takabori, who, went into exile. He also was nearly murdered, which would have changed a lot.

Well, he was the second to last samurai. That's right. Everybody knows the last one is Tom Cruise. The penultimate samurai. Saigo Takabori forgot a key part of the Bushido code is getting rid of all of your thetons. Yeah, that's very true. Gotta be able to run too.

My God. Soon afterwards, Japanese traders and laborers who worked in the foreign poor with foreigners were targeted by samurai as well. But political violence wasn't about to be confined to Japanese circles. By 1861, foreigners were being murdered regularly. It's not to be at least one per month, which is really high when you realize there's not a lot of foreigners in Japan at this point. Like, every single person that gets murdered is friends with every, like, everybody knows

everybody by name. I mean, so what was the, like selection process like? for killing these foreigners, like one at a time? Was there like a raffle system? Well, you see, there are three people who are designated as the so-called traitors. Okay. And they all have to go up into a tower. Yes.

And they choose as a group who it is they are going to target for elimination. I do like the idea of a feudal Japanese Lisa Rina. Yeah. I'm Saigo fucking Takamori. I don't know. Saigo's been really quiet all this thing. time and I feel like he's usually like a much more forward personality. I don't know. I feel like he might be one of the traitors.

And he's like, me, I'm the penultimate samurai. Do you know who you're talking to? Dutch Ron Funches just makes the absolute most disastrous decision very early in the game. Is Saigo Takabori drunk off of wine with a concerning amount of lip filler? Also, I don't know. It's like, of course you're going to be eliminating people, right? Like, this is the way that you are going to be attempting to eliminate malign influence. is by targeting people who are most immediately potentially aligned with the movement to undermine your authority. And it doesn't necessarily need to be all that targeted either. You're just whipping up hate against the foreigners who are doing a lot to earn that on their own. And so it's just going to be like, well, this guy's coming down the street. I don't like his kind. He's dying today. Fuck it.

There's literally a political faction known as the Expel the Barbarians faction. they were cooking with that one. I'm sorry, but they were fucking cooking. And that expel in the context of the slogan only meant murder? Yeah. Yeah. There was no hoisting and throwing from the, you know, parapet. It was sword or nothing.

I mean, this is the sort of thing that happens when you go into a country and expropriate a great deal of their wealth and natural resources by force. You're going to get what's coming to you. And not to mention, there's a lot to be said about this influx of foreigners coming in and not only just ruthlessly fucking over the country, but immediately clashing with every societal norm that Japan had. Yeah, sure. Specifically with the samurai class. Sure. Who will talk about it a little bit. Do not treat this with any kind of patience.

Because samurai are fucking assholes. But when you ask how they picked a target people, it really was random. Like the first case that I could find was a Russian sailor who was walking back to port, just got fucking butchered. This was by groups called the Ishin Shishi, which loosely means political activist, pretheses with weapons. And they normally operated as a group, virtually all of these people were of the samurai class. So they were nobles. And I know the samurai class could be quite fluid

in a lot of ways. Like there could be Roaning samurai that are not connected to any domain or house. It could be 47 of them. Yeah, exactly. One of them. Weirdly, Keanu Reeves. But a lot of these guys are ranked nobles in known domains like to say at Summa.

Everybody knows them. It would be like if a congressman walked down the street and just shot a guy. It's weird. Give it three months. Yeah, I'll say. Give it about three months. I really shouldn't have spoken that aloud.

It's going to say, you've had some congressmen get shot. You know, maybe they should turn it back around. Turn about his fair play, right? Didn't that congressman break that guy's arm too? Like, fairly recently? Oh, yeah. Was it a congressman? Yeah.

Yeah, that did happen. That was a sitting congressman, yeah. I'm just imagining like fucking Mark Wayne Mullen walking around with a katana. If anybody is going to walk around with a katana, it's, going to be a guy named Mark Wayne. Yeah, true, true. For non-Americans, in case you don't know, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security's first name is Mark Wayne.

It's not Mark Space Wayne. It is Mark Wayne. And you might be wondering, is Mark Wayne Mullen White? And the answer is, oh, yeah. Yeah, but he is also Cherokee. This is not a great moment in Cherokee history right now. Time comes for us all. I think genuinely, if we gave John Federman a katana, he would like, that would solve a lot of our problems.

I disagree. I think AJ's right, because I think Federman would tend towards a different aspect of Bushido than Mark Wayne Mullen. Yes. I'm just imagining like a remake of Mishima Life in Four Chapters, but it's about Federman. I just think it's really crazy that Mark Wayne Mullen, is somehow not the name of a man from Detroit. That's a Wayne County coded name. Absolutely.

I think that's my mom's neighbor. Right? It's the same guy that has three different Trump signs from three different elections still at his yard that he has not moved. Yes. Oh, no, no, no. They have their own ecosystems now.

And he's definitely not from Detroit proper either. Like, Mark Wayne Mullen, in the correct world, has got to be from fucking Southfield or something, right? He's in Southfield. works at like a very, very, very high paying job in West Bloomfield. Yes, yes. Anyway. After the Russian soldier got the sword, a group of Dutch sailors were next on the chopping

block, quite literally, while leaving a bar. And this made people nervous. But you have to also remember, these are common sailors. Nobody really gives a shit that people are killing them. Yeah. Then in 1861, Henry Huskin, the interpreter and secretary to the American mission was targeted. Now, Huskin was a Dutch immigrant to America and was an interpreter in Japan because Dutch was the only Western language that the Japanese had any real adoption of at

that point. Right. Yeah. He was pretty much living on the streets of New York City until he heard that America suddenly needed Dutch speakers for once. Finally, my time to shine. My one skill. He had a hand in virtually every American meeting in Edo. with the Japanese government. He was there for all of the signings of these treaties. And then one night while walking back to his home, while what else, accompanied by four men carrying lanterns, he was ambushed and killed by a group of Ishan Shishi,

allied with the Sat Tsuma domain. This was something that was so obvious that the footman knew them. Like, hey, I know what those guys are. And they're just immediately the moment you see them, the guys with the lanterns are right. Yep, this is what's happening. They just sort of step aside and let it happen. Well, yeah, they were bodyguards.

They immediately saw the Ishan Shishi and bowed and got out of their way because as a lower caste person in Japan, that was what you were supposed to do with the samurai wanted to kill someone. Yeah, well, these guys are fucking samurai. You're not going to be like, I don't think so. Let me talk to your manager. Yeah, I'm going to stop a samurai from killing someone today. Is a thing no one has ever said. No. As the violence got worse and worse, the French and British sense.

more and more soldiers in. Civilians, diplomats, or otherwise, began traveling with armed guards and never left the house unless they carried at least one gun on them. Yeah, sure. Like, people said they, like, slept with a revolver under their pillow

because people were getting their houses broken into by samurai. Hey, my grandpa did that. No one ever broke into his house. Samurai home invasion sounds like such a weird film from the 80s. Listen, listen, Kevin McAllister

could handle it, all right? Oh my god. Can you imagine home alone but Joe Peshi is a samurai? Give Joe Pesci a katana. I am from the wet bandit domain. Ishan Shishi running up the stairs, catching a paint can to the face. You have shamed your clan? I'm not saying that they should do it.

I'm just saying it would be amazing if they had. That was the sound of a boulder rolling down the sea. Stairs. Technically, under the rules of Japan, the samurai would be well within their rights to murder Kevin McAllister. Oh, absolutely. And you know what? His parents would bow and step out of the way. You're right, my lord. This kid was a little piece of shit. We're so sorry. We're going to get a little bit more onto the rights of samurai in a minute because they're about to become very important. A sentence I never thought I would say, saying the rights of samurai are very important. It's 2026. I think we should be a little bit more concerned about the wrongs of samurai.

Get them. Get them. You're saying we shouldn't center samurai voices. I think that samurai voices are over-emphasized in today's culture. Asap, man. I mean, you're not wrong. All samurai are bastards. Samurai technically cops. Again, like preventing them from killing people is about as impossible as preventing them from being pedophiles. Also true. Yeah. That was a huge part of the Shiba Barra rebellion actually. It's a huge part of Kabuki theater for like 200 years too. Yep. There were revolts because they were like, no,

Kabuki can only be done by adult men now because you keep fucking the children. We love our beautiful boys, don't we folks? No. And the Catholics showed up to Japan and they said no thank you. Too pedophilic for us, weirdly. First time in history. They were just worried about

the Catholics getting in the way of their supply frankly. Yeah. That's true. Now that brings us to the catalyst of today's episode. Hence why it has one of the names the Richardson Affair, a man named Charles Lennox Richardson. Richardson was born in London and then headed out to Shanghai to strike it rich as a merchant. And he was largely successful at this. And by 1862, he was deciding to call it quits, retire, and head back to the UK. Meaning, he would have to take a very long and convoluted trip back home.

So he got on the first ship he could that had a stop over in the port of Yokohama. And being an old merchant with a lot of friends who were moving around doing the shit that he was doing, he had some friends in Yokohama. And they wanted to show him around. So he ended up taking a bit of a vacation. He met up with name alert here.

Woodthorpe Charles Clark. Fuck out. Oh, yes. This is my friend, my good boy, Woodthorpe. That's a butler name if I've ever heard one. That is. You're a good man. Bring me my smelling salt.

Woodthorpe, there's some samurai at the door. Oh, dear, you said they're a samurai at the door, master. I'm just a humble woodthorpe. Like, it's a job? His job is thurping wood? Yes. I think it's a type of fair folk, actually. It's the thop of the wood.

Woodthorpe is what an elven bard is called. If it please you, sir, I'm going to play you a tune on the shabby scene. Woodthor played out some tunes. Here I go, playing my shamisen again. I sure hope no samurai will come around and kill me. Is that Tom Cruise? No! So they meet up with a few other friends, going to a little sightseeing tour,

which takes them down what was known as the Imperial Road on horseback. Here I go down the imperial road. I only skip down the imperial road, for I am a Thorpe. What? Thorpe is a kind of elven bard. I am but a simple thorpe upon the road. Watch me would. Richardson and the others had been warned to not use the road.

Now, this road is open for commerce and travel or whatever, but if a lord of a domain happens to be going, down it, it's going to cause a bit of, let's say, traffic jam for a lack of a better term, because when these guys travel, they take with them a huge group of people. They bring with them their entire

domain office, wherever it is they're going. It could be dozens or even hundreds of people. Whoa. So it's going to take up the road. And a lord was scheduled to arrive in Yokohama using the road at the same time period. So they're like,

hey, maybe don't go down there. Richardson, of course, ignores this. It did not take long for them to run into the Lord. Shimazoo Sabaro, traveling in a palanquin. Great pizza guy. Yeah. That's actually where Sabara pizza was formed in Yokohama.

Oh, yeah. It's an import. Hey, he was traveling in a palanquin, flanked by bodyguards, and heading for the nearby village of Namaguni. But Shemazoo wasn't just any lord. He was the Prince Regit of Set Sumo. for his underage son. He is arguably the third most powerful man in Japan.

Oh, no. Okay, I'm seeing where there might be a little bit of conflict of Bruin. I don't think it's a big deal. I'm the number three Thorpe in England. Now listen as I play my newest tune, Whomst let the dogs out. Spoilers, it's the Dutch. Being the regent of Satzuma,

it kind of goes without saying that Shimazoo was a hard line. traditionalists. And like virtually all samurai, mean as a motherfucker, they literally could not have run into a worst person on that road. I'm the one they warned you about. The pen pen,

ultimate samurai. I like how this has just turned into us doing voices. I don't get to do that all that often. We would love for you to do more voices. I wouldn't. Nope, you're voted down. Josh. Well, that's

democracy. Samurai were by law pretty much allowed to be outright serial killers if they felt like it. This is thanks to something called the right to strike. And not the fun kind.

We're not talking about local set suma for 269 or something like that. Can you imagine like fucking wildcat samurai strikes? I'm doing grassroots samurai organizing. You could argue that's what the 47

samurai. is about. Kind of. Yeah, actually. That's the first samurai union, local 47.

We don't know the Lord. We have each other. Yeah. This was a samurai law that allowed any samurai to murder

anyone of a lower class they believed to have insulted the samurai's honor. Now, you might be wondering what insults a samurai's honor? Well,

that's completely up to the individual samurai. I was going to say, it seems pretty like case by case. Yeah, I love being the,

the, the, the Lord who writes up this rule, however many hundreds of years ago, being like, there is absolutely no way that anyone is ever going to abuse this. I think that's fine because like the lower class, the merchant class, commoners, whatever, anybody below a samurai, they didn't see them as people. Right. Now, the only time this had to really be weighed is if they did it to a woman, which wasn't

illegal. You just had to have a really good reason for it. You get some paperwork then. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, actually, yes. So what happens is, so the slight to your honor is completely up to you as a samurai. It could be anything they thought could convince another samurai. Normally the municipal magistrate, who is also a samurai, was a suitable insult.

Because by law, if you did kill someone, more than likely, a lord would order their guards to do it for them. Or the guards would simply do it because they believed you insults. to the Lord that they were guarding, who is also a samurai, at which point they'd have to go and report it to the government and explain why they felt insulted. Then it would be discussed, and most of the time this was fine. This is just qualified immunity. Yeah.

Like literally. Yeah. The main difference is if a group of samurai, or sometimes one samurai, or your lord, thought that you killed someone wrong, you had to then kill yourself. So it's better than qualified immunity. It would be quite honestly, like every time the NYPD murders an innocent civilian and gets found guilty of it, the judge just hands them their gun to shoot themselves. That would be better, maybe, in some ways.

I mean, because they're pretty much never found liable at all under the existing system. So, yeah. There are accounts of this law being deployed for something as minor as a commoner making eye contact with a samurai. And this was fine. The legal bar is not high here. I'm seeing here, these laws were written by the samurai? That can't be right. That feels like maybe an oversight.

Yeah, by samurai four samurai. You're telling me these guys get to be judge, jury, and execution? Now I've heard everything. I'm filled with dread of the judge variety. I am Shimizu dread. So when Richardson and his party were walking down the road, rules of Japanese etiquette stated that he and his group need to get the fuck off the road, bow and allow Shimizu and his party to pass.

Just from purely like a practical perspective, that's what I'd do. You know, like just self-preservation. It's a lot of guys with weapons. Yeah. Yeah. If a grip of dudes with swords walked down my neighborhood here,

I'm not going to argue with them. I'm getting the fuck out of the way. I'm getting out of the way. I probably just walk on the grass for a little bit. It's fine. Yeah. It's like the time that I was in Stockholm and I accidentally walked in front of the changing of the guard

and a Swedish military. military guy yelled at me very loudly and I was spooked. Wait, is that why you hate the Swedes? Because you got yelled at? No, no, no. For disrupting their government. No, no, no, that was fully justified. I'm mad at them because they were not nice to me more broadly.

I accidentally wandered onto a military base in Copenhagen. Oh. And I was yelled at in perfect English to please leave the premises. Yeah, that's the only language they speak in Denmark. Yeah. That's true. It was Mads Mikkelson, actually. He was training for a role.

It was very lovely. But these guys didn't move out of the way. Instead, they squeezed onto the road on one side of Shemezoo's party. Here I come. What are they going to do? Kick me off the road? What are you going to do? Stab me?

It's a guy before he stabbed. Of course, Woodthorpe is just playing his song. Here goes the asshole walking by us. Of course, it's a classic English staple, but they don't know that. Yeah. Oh, no, of course. So many assholes on the. Nice hair, you fucking losers.

Oh, sorry, this isn't about you. When other members of Richardson's group who were familiar with Japan, Ward Richardson said what was happening exactly. Because remember, Richardson is used to Shanghai. Very different. But Richardson doesn't understand that, you know, because he's racist. Right. It's like, ah, you're all Asian to me.

I could just walk down the road and do it where the fuck I want. Well, I think that's the other thing, right? It's like, if you're coming from Britain, you would understand that if I don't know, the king is fucking going down the street, you're not just going to get in the road. Yeah, well, you'd also have to recognize the king as being above you. Right. And Richardson does not recognize any Japanese person of even being equal to him. And that's what I mean. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, he's like, I know what your skulls look like. I have my calipers. I see your brain pan. Mine is better than this man's. He's doing the skull thing again. Richardson laughed and then turns to his party and says, quote,

don't worry, I know how to handle these people. Certified Brett moment. Oh my God. That is the most I think have ever foreshadowed in this show before ever. Folks, he did not know

how to handle those people. How long was his head attached to his body after he said that? All right. Great. Great. The bodyguards of Shimizu getting increasingly pissed off

about how close these guys were going pulled their swords out and began yelling at them. Some of the foreigners, seeing just how badly this was going, quickly got the fuck out of Shemezu's way. Richardson instead turned around and walked away,

showing his back to the samurai. Oh, you don't do that. No, Wu, don't do that. Now, this is considered incredibly insulting. And just practical reasons. Never show your back to a samurai. These are all things that obviously we know.

That's how I could go about life without ever falling victim to any of the local Dutch Roney. You can always hear him coming. Shoes. Hi there. My name is Andy Vanderlion. I'm from Holland, Michigan,

and I am a local Dutch samurai. Everybody knows when confronted by a samurai, you're supposed to put your arms out to your side to look as big as possible. I went to Michigan State University. Go Spartans. Yeah, if you lock eyes with, With a samurai and you just blink very slowly, they'll realize that you're no threat to them.

You know all Thorpe's in the background of this Dutch samurai singing Sufion Stevens, Palisades, just at the top of his lungs. We came to take us. All things go, all things go to recreate us. All things know, all things know. Snap, snap, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, stab, snap, stop, stop, stop, stop. would Thorpe play the harp saying that really looks like it's going to hurt this set the men of the region off

and they began slashing and stabbing the living shit out of the party. Everyone else manages to run away but Richardson they seem to have a particular hatred for because he showed them like he truly insulted them by turning his back on them. So he gets a rundown, dragged off his horse and finished

off. Everyone else manages to get away. And I touched out earlier how it takes a little bit more of a step, but not much of a step, for a samurai to employ the right of striking on a woman. One of the people in the party was a woman. And the samurai did try to take her head off. But thankfully he was wearing quite a large hat, which happened to deflect the blow of the sword. British moment.

I'm also like picturing it. one of those big stupid floppy hats. Like I know that's not what it is, but in my imagination it is. What was steel rim is the thing? It was a church hat, but it was like, what, like that guy from mortal pomp? I was going to say, yes,

it's reinforced like Kong Lau's hat. Yes. And she managed to get away losing only her hat. Wow. Wow. Now, owing to how the right to strike work to the bodyguards, who again are all samurai,

walk over to Shimazoo, their Lord Regent, who's still sitting in his chair. He has never gotten up. And they tell him what happened. There's some argument if Shemazu ordered them to do it or if they did it because they knew as what was expected of him.

He simply nodded and they picked him up and they kept walking, leaving his dead body on the side of the road. Wow, wow, wow. Well, he sure knew how to handle him. Yokohama by now would have been going nuts. Men grab their guns. They jumped on their horses and they booked it

down the road to the scene of the attack. There they found Richardson's body. and bring it back to Yokohama. He was on vacation. They scream. He just wanted a jet two holiday. Nothing beats it. Once he got to town,

Shimazu, as the law required, reported the murder to the local magistrate. Shimazoo, however, began lying. Now, part of it is true. He says that the white people were breaking the law,

and he saw no issue with the murder. The local magistrates were not so cool with this whole thing because, you know, the murdering of, foreigners is becoming quite a serious issue between them and the foreigners. So he asked for the name of the samurai who cut Richardson down.

Shimazu, however, wasn't a narque. And he decided to give them a fake name. Fuck yeah. He blamed a local Ronin of the Setsumma domain named Okana Shinusuke who did not exist. Let's go! He was a simple traveler on the land. Well, I've never heard of this guy. He must not exist.

No, no, I mean, if he didn't exist, would we have a song about him, Thorpe? Yes, of course, the famous Ronan, Guy Swordhaver. Everybody knows Lord Guy Swordhaver. He's a real asshole. But boy, does he have a sword? Do not believe the sword he had. With pressed on this, Shimizu simply told the Shogun,

look, the British are mad. Tell them this at Tsumabomah domain will take responsibility for it. They'll get where I'm coming from. They did not in the fact to get where he was coming from. I know how to handle these people. Racism deployed in both ways. That actually is kind of what happens later, but we'll get there. Yokohama and Ado had been the scene of virtually all of the violence between the foreigners and the Japanese.

And since the murder of the American secretary in Ado, a lot of people had packed their shit up and moved to Yokohama. And in each case of these murders, at least the well-known ones, all of them had been samurai. and despite the Shogunate insisting to the foreign powers, they'd hold men accountable who did the killings, they literally never did a single time. And you can see why. Technically, under Japanese law at the time, what the samurai were doing was completely legal.

Like, if a group of samurai, Ishan, Shishi, Ronin, or otherwise, decided, I feel like killing a guy today, they can do it. It's fine. And I feel like it's also not just about strictly, it's also about preserving an order and a way of life that is actively under threat by occupying foreign powers essentially yeah specifically in the case of the shogna they were kind

of caught between a rock and a hard place like the shogna wanted to appease the foreigners because they knew what would happen if they didn't right but they also needed to appease the many many feudal lords who now wanted to kill him as well because he was giving up their rights as samurai, which is considered dishonorable to the shogunate, in turn, the shogunate is dishonoring the emperor by not doing his job. This is really bad for the shogun. Right. It's just bad all around for him.

So he's telling the samurai, look, what you did is perfectly fine, but could you please stop doing it? Just dial it back a bit. Because I also feel like the people who are coming in from, you know, Britain, the Netherlands, the U.S. are probably also pretty bad neighbors just generally. Like I have to imagine that for just the average guy

sort of living in one of these neighborhoods, they are pretty happy to see Justice meet it out in this way. Yeah, there didn't really seem to any popular opinion pro-f foreigner. There were lords that were pro-f foreigner insofar as stop killing them so we can get their shit. Exactly, the money. The train. We don't care about them. I mean, anybody who's ever been on a holiday and ran into a group of British men between the ages of 18 and 35 knows how annoying they can be.

Now imagine that they have fucking moved into your neighborhood. Yeah. And they're sailors for the most part too, right? Like that's like the best representatives of any nation are its sailors and merchants. Right. Sailors at the mid-1800s. These men are covered in like fleas. Their skin is just boiling with a very very,

different things that they're going to carry into your country. A roided out Donald Duck just walks into your bar. And so while some segments of the Japanese court objected to the killing publicly, none of them disagreed with it under any legal terms or even like person to person. They're like, nah, that was fine. He was within his rights to do so. But also, this makes us look really bad because it makes it look like we can't control our country because we keep killing people.

Do you know, was there any diplomatic pressure happening from the national governments as well? Okay. Yeah, yeah. They kept insisting that the Shogun control his samurai, hand them over or within their own courts, punish them. The samurai would be like, yep, we'll get right on that. And then literally never did a single time because they couldn't. They feasibly couldn't. Like the man responsible for this killing is the Prince Regent of the most powerful domain in Japan.

Right. He can't do anything against the sky. It's also like, it turns out that when you set up an entire force that is given the license to kill and operates with effective complete immunity, they end up killing a lot of people. Yeah, they're going to do what they do best, which is paperwork and murder. Ah, New York's finest. And just to be clear, this whole thing is moot because swordhaver did it. Yeah, swordhaver did it. Yeah.

The murder of Richardson had hardly been the first attack on Brits in the country. there have been multiple attacks on British consulates throughout Japan at this point. And almost all of them were done by Satsuma, samurai in one capacity or another. Some weren't, but this kind of political difference did not matter to the British. They did not understand the country they were dealing with. The merchants of Yokohama demanded that Colonel Neal, the senior British diplomat, immediately order more soldiers from Shanghai to Japan to force the Shogun into turning over Shemezu. who remember, Prince Regent of the easily the most powerful domain in Japan.

Or failing that, use military force to kidnap a different lord until the Shogun handed over Shimizu. Neil immediately rejected this idea, knowing it's insane. And he doesn't have authorization to simply free boot a war against the Shogunate. And it's not like the British would normally be against this. Remember who we're dealing with here. But there's other things to consider. It had not been that long since Japan had been forced over. and signed all those treaties.

Any war against Japan would require the input of the Dutch, the Americans, the French, and the Russians. And destroying the Shogunate didn't really benefit any of them. The Shogunate was on this side of the unequal treaties. So they want him in there. Taking the Shogun out or going to war against him was a surefire way to make all these sick deals they had go up and smoke. Instead, Neil went to work investigating what had actually taken place so he could send a report back to London. and Japan was more than open with their own investigation into the murder. And what is pretty funny here is quite possibly for the first time in British imperial history,

they fell victim to something they'd always benefited from. Institutional racism. Because surprise here, the samurai were incredibly racist. Yeah, something that would not really change in Japan until the end of World War II. Yeah. Or arguably. Kind of ever. Yeah.

At least it changed politically. That's true. I thought it died with the last samurai. I was told... Tom Cruise is still alive. Technically, the Meiji restoration is ongoing in a very strange compound somewhere in California.

The survivors of the group testified to the Japanese government, the British government, and the press that Richardson had done nothing wrong. However, they did not contend with the story that he had not moved out of the way or bowed. Remember, their argument was he didn't have to. This is for two reasons.

In the treaty that the British signed with the Japanese exempted British citizens from any local laws or customs, instead, if a British citizen was accused of violating them, the Japanese were to simply turn them over to British officials for trial and judgment. This is all explicitly in the treaty that the Shogunate signed with the foreigners. Obviously, that is not what happened here. The Japanese, in turn, simply did.

did not believe the survivor's story. Think of the layers at play here. Not only are these people commoners, which they are in the, in the samurai mind, but they're also barbarians. Yeah. Right. Similarly, the Japanese are commoners and barbarians in the mind of the British. The Japanese contended that if Richardson had simply bowed and moved out of the way,

none of this would ever happen. And they actually, in a great term of like court argument here, actually had a precedent for this. and called the white guy forward to take their side. It was a different Dutch American merchant who was weirdly acting as the kingdom of Hawaii's general counsel in Japan. What? Eugene Van Reed.

That's a whole other story we really can't get into. Fair enough. We'll talk about it at some point in the future. He had run into the same situation. And he simply got off his horse, got off the road, and bowed. And nothing happened to him. and Reid testified to this fact as well.

But the idea of bowing to a Japanese person seemed just absolutely insane to the British. It's absolutely anathema, right? At minimum, the British believed themselves and any Westerners should hold themselves in the, quote, highest dignity and were equal to any Japanese person regardless of social rank within Japan.

Meaning, they believed any white man was at least as good as the emperor, a man who was considered a deity. Tattooing the skull thing again We are also born of your son God Oh, oh the stabbing Let me show you my back Oh God again

And not only should they be treated As high as the emperor or Shogun should But they should be afforded the same rights that they have Meaning he believed Like Richardson, you know Before he got the old Stabby Stabby believed that it actually should have been Shimizu to get out of his way when he went down the road. That's so fucking cool.

Well, who won that battle, Richardson? Yeah. Who ended up taking back shots? Huh? Huh? This reminds me of, uh, there's this movie called the daughter of a samurai, which was this Japanese Nazi Germany co-production made during World War II. What?

And there is a, it's so great because it's, it's supposed to be like, look at how our two cultures can get along. Us noble Germans and you inbred hillbillies in Japan, you know, like, in case you didn't know, look at our symbol, the swastika. It's just like your Monji. Oh, have we blown your minds yet? Oh, so it's like on some noble savage type shit. It's deeply condescending and they release it in Japan. They have some of the biggest Japanese stars in it at the time. And everyone is like, well, this sucks. Why are we letting Germans tell us what to think? Meanwhile, the Japanese are making their own versions, calling them the Mayo forest creatures or something. Yeah, giving them all fangs.

This is a bit out of scope of this specific episode, but I will say, this is why ethno-fascism will ultimately always lose. Because you can establish temporary alliances between ethno-fascist states, but at the end of the day, it is not possible for multiple different ethnicities to bear the simultaneous mantle. of the ultimate human, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It led to some points of contention between the Japanese and the Germans. Yeah. Famously to the point that an avowed Nazi found himself protecting Chinese civilians during

the rape of Nen king, because he didn't understand why the Japanese were trying to kill them while actively complicit in the Holocaust. Yeah, just like that Japanese ambassador who was also getting Jews out of Europe for, yeah, the same kind of reason. Like, why are they doing this? Because these people aren't Chinese. Why do you hate you? I don't understand.

The Japanese had so little conception of Jews. This is a famous story that I feel like always gets shared on podcast. But like the Germans actually went and got the protocols of the learned elders of Zion translated into Japanese. And at the time, this has some knock on effect later on like with Om Shuneriko and everything. But at the time, Japanese people read this and they're like, wow, these guys are so smart. We need to get some Jews over here. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of my favorite stories of all time.

And meanwhile, the Nazis like, oh shit, they actually believe it. Fuck. And then meanwhile, Mussolini's like, you know, I think they're onto something with this rice thing. What if we got rid of all of our pasta and just had everyone eat rice? Mussolini banging his hands on the table. Like, why is nobody talking about Albanians? Less hills. What is funny is that once the press got a hold of the story, they in turn reached out to other people who knew

Richardson and it turned out Richardson was kind of a well-known piece of shit during his time in China who also treated Chinese people very, very badly. This included screaming at his servants, beating people, and wouldn't you know it, routinely running Chinese people off the road

while riding his horse. It's nice when two cultures find common ground. So you see, if he simply explained to Shimizu how he felt about Chinese people, they would have been best friends. that would have been a dudes absolutely do not rock moment no no no no these dudes not rock they suck in fact

we found the first case of dudes do not rock we're putting our foot down it's underlying nine times under do not anyway in March of 1863 almost a year later Colonel Neil gets orders from the foreign office of how to proceed next he's to take a gunboat and deliver a letter of reparations demanding 100,000 pounds in payment from the Shogun for Richardson's murder. 100,000 pounds in 1850 whatever money?

Yeah, that is not a just-in-fitting. That is so much money. That's all the gold. I was going to say, that's like 500,000 gold. The Shogun's like, what do you want me to pay you with? You stole all my gold. The Shogun was given 20 days the answer. And if they refused or did not answer,

Neil was authorized to use force to compel them into a response. Like I pointed out, this 100,000 pounds figure is not adjusted for inflation, and it cutted to over one third of the Shogun's entire budget for the year. Oh my gosh. The Shogun attempted to kick the can down the road for as long as he could. He missed deadlines, requested extensions, miss the new deadlines. Hey, who is this guy? Donald Trump? Am I right, fellas? Booh-be-b-b-b-b-h-h. There's a goddamn Cheeto in Etto.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's on the way. It's on the way. I'm pretty sure. Yeah, I sent a guy sword haver. He's got the money. He's into the docs right now. More like money haveer. Am I ready? Gold haver.

At one point, they sent a letter saying, we could have sworn we sent you the letter telling you when we were going to pay you, but it must have gotten lost. I hate it when that happens. I remember college. This is just me paying. Yeah, I was going to say, this is just me paying my rent when I got out of the army. Uh-huh. It's like, oh, fuck, I don't have a job.

I literally had last night a series of dreams where I was right back in college again, having difficulty paying rent, trying to figure out how I could take enough classes to graduate, all that shit. I think I'm having a midlife crisis. I think you just have a fever. Well, yes. Yeah, I feel like you're just ill. That, too. I like to think of this podcast recording right now is my Jordan Flu game of. podcasting, you know? Oh, absolutely. Woodthorpe is going to write a song about this, Josh.

I think all podcasters should have a stat line. I think I'm, I don't know what my war is, sort of as abstracted for podcast numbers, but I like to think. Moneyball podcasts, Josh. That's exactly what I'm going to do. Podcast Saber metrics. I just, I just cut an email saying I'm fired. I've been replaced by two other cheaper people. What's happening? No, no. No. No. Oh no, I'm being traded to Ohio Fuck Jonah Hill Get out of my house

I'm gonna surf if I want to Jonah How can you not be romantic about podcasting Eventually the Shogun You know I assume went to some guys like hey man Let me hold like five koku for a moment I'm hurting real bad Because he eventually agrees to pay up What it's clear that Edo's about to get smoked

By the gunships that are parked outside And this really has nothing to do with anything. But the British have such a little understanding of Japan at the time that in their dispatches, they're calling the Shogun effectively the head of state for Japan because the emperor is not someone anybody's dealing with. They kept calling him the tycoon. Yes. The English word tycoon comes from the Japanese word tycoon, but we didn't totally understand the word. Because I think tycoon is sort of a second in command role. Whereas, of course, we refer to it as like the guy in charge.

dime you. Yeah. Well, they just saw the roller coasters he was building and were like, he has to be.

Yeah. That's just a Shogun Total War. Yeah, which I love. I love. No roller coasters. By the way,

all of the chatting about, all the chatting that I brought up about podcast Sabermetrics reminded me that the Mets opener is happening right now

and you will all be very happy to know that in the top of the first inning, the pirates already got two runs off the Mets. We are so fucking back. Let's go Mets. God.

The Mets deserve it. Yes. After the government and Edo was told by the British, hey, we're done here. Now we're going to head down to Kagoshima, the capital of the Satsuma domain, and we're going to get our money from them. This is when the Shogunate tells them, hey, why don't you pump the brakes for a minute, explain that Satsuma doesn't really listen to anybody, but would probably listen to the Shogunate more than you.

if you go, they're definitely going to shoot at you. When Neil said they weren't going to wait any longer, the Shogun then said, okay, let me send one of my newly purchased Dutch steed warships to go with you, not to play peacemaker, but now the Shogun sees an opportunity. The Brits are going to go bomb this shit out of Set Summa,

and we can now use this opportunity to put them in line. Oh. The British say, fuck no, and leave without them. So the Shogun gets literally nothing out of this out of the debt. Oh. The British demands of the Setsuma Domain are delivered by a squadron of seven warships with them arriving in August.

Are those all British ships too? Yeah. Wow. The squadron also brings the entire British diplomatic corps and is commanded by Admiral, big name alert here. Augustus Leopold Cooper. Okay. Yes.

Alk! After getting to Kagoshima Bay, the British invited Shimizu aboard the ship to receive their demands. And what is pretty fun about this meeting is that it's very clear everyone involved fucking hates one another. Shimazu originally plotted to kill the Brits and steal their ship. He has been concealed daggers on them because like they're not going to bring their swords, right?

Because it's a diplomatic meeting. They're asked to leave their swords behind and they do so, which really should have been a clue to the British that something was up. Because samurai are never going to leave their swords behind. Right. Obviously like the plan was to get aboard, kill them with their concealed weapons and then overpower them steal the ship. They changed

their mind when they got on the ship and found it was packed with armed Marines. Wait, there's guys on here? All these guys have guns. They don't look very friendly. Meanwhile, like one of their daggers just like falls out of the commode. What was that? Nothing? Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it. It's chill. That's my friend. Stephen drops daggers a lot. It's just what he does. It's in his name. In Japan, you have to earn your last name. me, please don't kill us. Because we're all sword not havers here. Am I right, fellas?

Another one falls. The British in turn make sure to show their superiority during the meeting. They refused a bow. They insist on shaking hands knowing it's very insulting to Shimazoo's social standing.

And they also drink sake with one another while not offering any to the samurai. Holy shit. What are you doing? Doing it with sake specifically too. Like not even like English ale. The one thing if it was beers, yeah.

Good Lord. The British drink their own sake and then like oh, would you like some? Knowing Shima'su at that point has to turn it down. I kind of have to respect it. That says big dogging on another level, dude. Yeah. Let the dogs out. It's so petty. I can't

help but like it. And you just imagine how angry this guy is. Just the most red face fucking vein in the forehead. Just like, no, I'm fine. I don't want any. It looked so yummy. But also imagine how badly the British served sake. Oh yeah.

Again. I was slorping all over the place. It's like when I ordered a Guinness in Tbilisi, Georgia, that she was like 50% head. I will say, I was pretty insulted with the way that they poured beer in the Netherlands in general when I was there. They just, they don't do it well. No, they don't. Too much head, not enough head.

Way too much head. And they served in the tiniest fucking. cops. Well, they're Dutch. They're saving money. You'll drink the foam and you will enjoy it with your plain cheese sandwich. It's their beer. It's like the fucking Heineken they'd even pour that way. It's like, what are you guys doing? Jesus.

Visiting the Heineken factory when I was in Amsterdam like that was the best, some of the best Heineken I'll ever have in my life. And it was poured by an American tour guide. So, it's fresh out of the Heineken fruit. So, you know, they squeeze it right there. Oh, sure, sure. It's right out of the

udders. there's a giant bee that they just milk for its Heineken. Oh, no, it's slurbed from Futurama. It's Dutch slurb. What is interesting here is at no point where the British accusing Shemezu of the murder personally, because even they knew that he didn't kill Richardson, like they correctly surmise like, I feel like this guy wouldn't do it. Like, I'm not going to dirty my hands with this type situation.

They knew his bodyguards did. So the letters demanded that he hand the bodyguards over. as well as pay them 25,000 pounds. The letter was also written in Japanese by one of the diplomatic course translators, and apparently, from all the sources I read, it was horribly mistranslated. Wait, so I want to make sure I'm getting this right. The Brit said, you owe us 100,000 pounds. The counter was, okay, but you owe us 25,000 pounds?

They demanded 100,000 pounds from the Shogunate. Sure. And then a further 25,000 pounds from Set Summa. were both asks from so is, oh wow. To separate, yeah, entities. Shima Zui replied to what might be a masterclass of telling the British to fuck on. First, he says, look, I would love to hand over the man who killed Richardson. However, I simply have no idea where they are.

Those were the same bodyguards he brought with them. That's awesome. Those dudes were standing on the boat when they got the letter. Guy Sword Haver and Stephen Knife drop right there. then he's like, well, you know, I'm going down your demands point by point. Your first demand was to hand over the bodyguards. So I obviously have to do that first. So it doesn't feel right to pay you until we hand over the bodyguards.

Oh my God. So any further discussion on the money is going to have to wait until we find the guys that you want. Oh, and also he's like, by the way, I'm simply the head of the set Summa domain. It's the Shogun's fault for all of this since he signed the treaties that allowed you in here. in the first place. Chichison simply would never have been killed if the Shogunate never signed those documents. And if Richardson's parents

had never procreated it's really their fault, I feel. Yeah. Then for further inquiries, he said, you should probably talk to the government in Edo and then he fucked off back to his castle at Gagashima. Wee. Mind you, Shibazu is completely ignoring the Shogun at this point.

Neil was pissed and warned Shemazu that any further communication they had would no longer be conducted under the legal flag of truce. And Shibizu just kind of was like, yeah, all right? But let's fucking party, dude. It's not as though the set Tsumma domain is powerless or without weapons. It was one of the most powerful domains in Japan and had benefited massively from the weapons trade of the previous few years.

Now, the weapons they had were the best of the best, of course. But they had training. They knew how to use them. and while they were out of date, they could still kill people, and Cooper knew that. So when the first things he planned on doing was sending his squadron of ships and Marines to seize the three steam-powered warships that the Setzuma had purchased already from the British. Now, the goal wasn't to blow them up. Their goal was to take them hostage because they're worth way more than 25,000 pounds.

You want your ships back, give us our money. Yeah. The thing is, in most countries, or in this case, fiefdoms, or perhaps my mom, mom's house, you can't just show up and start stealing stuff and expect someone out to shoot at you. So on the night of August 12th, 1863, Cooper orders his ships to move forward and deploy the Marines onto the steamships to take them. They assume, thanks to bad weather and really bad wind, that the Satsuma weren't going

to do anything to stop them. They were wrong. The Marines boarded the ships without any problem, but as they did so, Satsuma samurai and also commoner soldiers run down to shore. Man, there's several batteries of cannons and begin ripping into the British fleet. These cannons ironically were British manufactured Armstrong guns. And they had learned how to use them from the Dutch. Do you know what kind of a fleet the Brits were sailing here?

It's seven normal warships for the day. Like, they're powerful. Don't get me wrong. but in order for the warships to be powerful, especially on land-based targets, you need to be arrayed in a line of war, firing volleys, things of it. Like, if these ships moved in formation,

they could have very easily fucked these cannons up. However, if they're in range, you're in-range type situation, it's still not going to go great for you. The flagship of the squadron immediately gets hit with several shots. It seems the Japanese really zeroed in on the flagship. We don't know if they knew,

it was the flagship or not, or just they were the most unlucky people in the world. A single cannonball smashes through the deck of the flagship and not only hits the captain directly in the head. Oh my God. But obliterates his skull

and then goes directly into the face of his second in command, killing them both instantly. Okay, this just sounds like something from Return of the Oprah did. They did the skull. thing, parenthesis derogatory.

Cannonball replaces head, guy doing the cartoonist thing of hands going up, feeling nothing but cannonball. He gives a shrug

and then falls over. The cannonball has two googly eyes on it. The British were so convinced that they just stroll up without a problem, they did not have

their ships arrayed into a battle line for firing at the shore. So they quickly send orders up to do it. All while opening fire to silence the Satsuma guns. The gathered British squadrons seemingly were just firing wildly at every direction because it's nighttime. They can't see where the cannons are unless they see

them fire and like, fuck there's one. Fire over there. And by then their head is a cannonball. And all the guys holding lanterns are off to the side bowing. Exactly. Nothing's illuminating. No. The lantern guys are just getting plastered with artillery. They begin opening fire on steam ships that are parked in the bay including the ones they were meant to capture they burn down the steamships like with their guys still in them

No no they got the Marines off So that would have been really funny No wait my daggers They blow up several ships from the kingdom of Ryukyu We've done an episode in the kingdom of Ryukyu before But it bears mentioning that The kingdom is not a vassal of Japan Rather it is a vassal of set Sumer

directly. That's how powerful this domain is. They have a vassal state. Wow. The British were so unprepared for all this going sideways. They hadn't scouted out the shore batteries. They didn't know if there's any ground-based defenses full of rifle-bearing samurai. They also did not bring that much ammo.

So they're just pounding Kagoshima as a hole, which in turn sparks a massive fire that spreads out of control thanks to traditional wooden housing and very strong wood. wins. Oh no. But like I said, they didn't bring a lot of ammo, so they couldn't even do this for very long. And while they could have sent Marines to shore to try to take out the shore batteries, they lacked ammo to support the landing and figured any shore-based landing would result in a lot of dead Marines, which would be really bad for PR and specifically for Colonel Neal's job. So after a couple of hours of trading shots, the squadron was forced to pull back. Once they're out range of the Setsuma guns, the British took a look at the butcher's bill for their little

fuck up. They lost 13 men with another 59 wounded. While doing so, they managed to destroy 5% of the entire city, including the Ryukian embassy, because I guess if there's one thing that the British and the Setsuma could agree on is fuck the kingdom of Ryukyu. You might be wondering how many civilian casualties they caused by blindly shelling a densely packed city made out of wood houses that then caught on fire. Right. Zero. What?

The reason for this is Shimizu is very sure of two things going into this confrontation. He wasn't going to give the British a goddamn thing and then they would shoot at him. So they evacuated everyone or, or? That's right. Whoa. As soon as the British had anchored off shore, he ordered a full evacuation, which is funny because somehow the British did not see this from their ships. Wow.

Well, it was very windy. If they saw that, they might be like, I feel like this guy isn't going to be, you know, negotiating under fair terms if he's getting rid of the entire city population. They must be holding a race in town. Look at all those people running. Those people sure love leaving home. They have such strange customs, these people. Look, they're going to the hills that greet us.

There's also some argument of how many of the Satsuma's guns they managed to take out. As five Setsuma soldiers were killed. However, the domain itself and some papers on the subject suggest that almost all of those were due to crews fucking up and accidentally blowing themselves up while reloading the cannon. God damn it, Tom. Once again, very Obra Dincoded. Similarly, there's reports that several of the British casualties have been caused by their own guns blowing up. So we aren't sure how many guys accidentally killed themselves in this battle via exploding cannons, but I'm pretty sure the number is greater than zero. The lesson here is don't buy British cannons.

Yeah. Unless you're Japanese, it kind of, it seems like I worked out for them pretty well. After the battle the Shogun it freaked out. Sure, this is going to lead to a full on no shit war between them and the foreigners. They demanded that Setsuma do as the British say and end this shit. So Shimizu promised the Shogun, look, look, look. It's clear to me that the British want no more of the smoke. But, you see, they want 25,000 pounds.

I don't have that. so could you give me 25,000 pounds? The Shogun did, and then Shemezu never paid him back. I love this guy. He's a great little piece of shit. The British also took the Satsuma at their word that they would dutifully search for the murderers, but of course they never did.

It should be said that the Brits assumed that this would be the case, but were happy with an official letter from Shemezu himself, accepting that Setsuma was at fault for the whole killing Richardson thing. Both sides could and did claim victory here. For the British, they got their money, and that was about it. For the Satsuma, it did a lot of stuff. Namely, it proved that the Shogunate was dying. A domain could ignore them, freely go to war against the foreigners,

make their own deals with them, and just completely disregard any orders that came from Edo. Furthermore, the Shogun was supposed to be a military dictator who ran the country, but traditionally, he was supposed to be the Emperor's military commander in charge of defending Japan. But it's hard to legitimize yourself as a military dictator if you're arguably not the strongest military anymore. The Anglo-Sat Tsuma War was another nail in the growing coffin.

That would be hundreds of reasons for the coming Meiji Restoration and the Bo Sheen War. The Meiji Restoration, which is still ongoing. It's just in a bunker in California. That's right. They haven't completed it yet. Tom Cruise is trying really hard to take away my swords and I'm not going to have it. But once they find Shelly Miss Cavage, it's going to be fucking over for you.

Yep. Well, and it's also like, this ends up being good for the, the Shogun, because it takes all of this pressure of I'm going to get fucking killed off of you. And you just get to retire and be a rich aristocrat and take pictures of your cat.

Yeah, pretty much. You'll be fine. This ends up being really good for the Setsuma, specifically because that treaty between them and the British. Yeah. The treaty with the British stipulate that the British would begin selling them steam-powered warships,

rifles, training and just anything else really. Sat Suma became the closest partner that the British had in Japan. Because the British saw the Setsuma as more stable and easier to deal with than the Shogun. And all it took was killing the most annoying Englishmen in Japan. The two became so close in fact that when the Shogun was overthrown and the Boshin war started, the British remained a close ally of Setsuma, allowing them, along with the war. to Choshu to become one of the most powerful

factions in the coming Meiji Restoration and arguably this leads directly to the Satsuma Rebellion as well. The end. These folks just have a lot of shit going on. Have they ever thought about just like getting a hobby? Yeah, mostly killing Richardson. That was their hobby.

Maybe they should start a podcast. I've heard that's a good hobby. The Satsuma killing that guy was literally the best diplomatic move they did throughout this whole era. The British were like, look, we're kind of upset about the whole killing Richardson thing, but like, you guys want to do business? And then Sant Summa rode that way for a hundred years. Look, sometimes you got to take some unorthodox ways of getting into business arrangements. And sometimes you just got to let an asshole die in order to get that treaty set up.

Like, yeah, Shima Zoo sitting there like, look, I like to make deals. And by making deals, I mean killing that asshole over there. It's funny, right? because I doubt he was missed by very many, considering, you know, everything. Yeah. I didn't really see anything of like, his friends were like,

oh, he was so close to us or whatever. But like, everyone that knew him in China, I was like, well, yeah, he was kind of a dick. Right. You know who did miss him, though? Woodthorpe. Yeah, that's true. Woodthorpe rusted second in command.

Yeah. He's barred. Well, my shamison quietly weeps. But guys, we do a thing on the show called Questions from the Legion. And that is, support the show on. Patreon. You'll find the link in the show notes below at any level. And you can ask us a question

using Patreon DMs or use the Discord, which you'll also have access to. Or you can attach it to Richardson, walk it into somewhere and have a whole bunch of Samurai's kill him and give us the message. This one isn't really working to all. And we'll answer it on air. I just killed him. It's fine. I killed them. And I gave you the letter. You put the message on his back and we'll be sure to see it because he's going to turn his back to us. That's right. That's that's That's right. This question comes from the Discord. You have a time machine and falsified documents. You're hired as your principal of your school while growing up, but make that elementary, middle, or high school.

All right. What is the one rule or policy that you change on day one to make your younger self's life easier in school? Give Josh Borman a gondom. Everybody gets a katana. Everyone. Give katanas to everybody. More computer lab time. And also, we don't discontinue the practice. of playing Oregon Trail by the time Brian gets to school so that he can also play it just like his older brother and sister

and not feel totally left out for the next 35 years of his life. I mean, you can die from dysentery without Oregon Trail. That's true. Yeah, but we don't, I mean, that's, it's not nearly as fun. It takes so much work to get dysentery these days, you know? Just go around licking stuff. Yeah.

We abolish the Bible. That's going to be the big one for me. That's a huge one for a Christian school. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you went to a Christian. I did. Yeah. Okay.

To Dutch Reformed Christian schools. Oof. So we're abolishing the Bible, folks. We're actually, we're not only abolishing it. We are making it illegal. I like all of your policies better than mine, which was just like, give Joe free school lunch because I was always hungry. Oh, no. Joe!

I was poor. Josh and I grew up privileged. So there's a lot of non-Americans that listen that aren't aware of where this comes from. I can't speak for any school policies in America anymore, but specifically the school that I went to and the school district that I went to in the state that I was in, students had to pay for their own school lunches. There was a reduced school lunch policy.

Like if your parents were poor, you could pay reduced rate, but that was still too much for me and my family. And I wasn't the only one. So we just couldn't eat at school. That's something that happens in America. And it's actually worse now in a lot of ways. I've heard,

now they allow children to go into debt. Yes. So you can have school lunch debt. Some places they've made it a policy where you have to feed the kid no matter what. So you just tack it on as some sort of like end of year gigantic bill that you send their families. Which is great too because then it can be turned into another financial instrument that can be. Yeah. I mean, if you have all that debt, you can leverage that.

Yeah. Got to teach those kids young that the country sucks. That's right. Yeah. I think I would abolish facial hair. I like a facial hair, I think in. general, we had this policy at Catholic school where you could have no facial hair or just a mustache. Oh, what are you? The New York Yankees? And so for me, I think just just get just don't have

teenagers have facial hair at all. I like to think AJ that your school was like really concerned about like mustard gas getting released in San Diego. So it was so the gas masks could fit on your faces. The thing was my senior year I played God in children of Eden and they asked if I could get a special exemption to grow a beard for it? And they said, no, but you can grow a mustache. And I just imagine the world where I did that. Yes, yes, exactly. I weirdly ended up having the same rules because I was on the hockey team, which

had a no facial hair policy, which was a policy that was specifically targeted him. Oh, no. As the only person on that team, that could grow facial hair, I'm like, this sucks shit. specifically an anti-Armenian rule. Exactly. Yeah. It's because Armenians

are supposed to play ice hockey, so I'd be punished for it. You know what? I'm going to amend that rule and say, if you could grow a full beard or a full facial hair of any kind,

go nuts for it. But if it's going to, I'm just trying to save people embarrassing yearbook photos. If it's going to be grody, you can't do it. No grody facial hair. It can't look like

it could also be on your balls. This is to save me specifically from some very embarrassing yearbook photos. But fellas, I believe we have casted a pod into the cast of Bishito. But you host other shows. Plug those shows. Yeah, we host the only Bishito podcast, the worst of all possible worlds. We abide by a strict code of honor. It's a show where we look at various pop cultural artifacts, usually framing them in the context of our long, dying empire.

We look at movies, video games. We just talked about Clear Expedition 33 with you, Joe, for two, coming on three episodes now. That's right. And we also cover, because Josh and I grew up evangelical, we used to listen to an evangelical children's radio show from Focus on the Family that was designed to be entertainment and propaganda for little Christian boys and girls. And that was called Adventures and Odyssey. That's something that we have an ongoing sub-series covering.

and so if anyone had little brain flares go up hearing that name, you should come over and listen to us. We have a lot of fun. You should. It's great. Yeah, Joe, you've also been on to talk about Adventures in Odyssey with us. I sure have. But also, to be clear, not just Adventures and Odyssey.

We have an interest in reactionary culture more broadly, especially reactionary Christian culture. And so much of our material is about sort of analyzing those narratives and trying to understand how they have. have so much purchase. We've done episodes about weird shit like, you know, heaven is for real and God's not dead and stuff like that. And also like internet culture.

If you are like us and over the age of 25 and you don't know what the fuck Mr. Beast is and you're too afraid to ask, we've got some episodes about him and internet apologies and the old history of new grounds. Yeah, Mr. Beast

has been a constant object of fascination for us and and desire. No! Absolutely. He's so hot. And smoke show. In the coming couple weeks, we are going to be releasing our next installment of the apparently annual series we are doing called Beast Week. God, don't make it annual. Don't make it annual. It's going to be annual. We team up with Kill the Computer, formerly Western Kabuki.

Yes. And just cover so much Mr. Beast all the time. Yes. I was a huge fan of Beast Week last year because that's the only way I, I keep up with what's going on in the Beast realm. Other than the time that I saw the clip of, I believe, Mike Tyson flooring him with a kidney shot. Yes, that was so good. That made me feel good, even though both of them are terrible.

I am here to let you know that Beast Week 2026 is going to be even bigger and better. And Josh, you have another show, right? That's true. I also host a podcast called Ill Conceived. The podcast about natalism, the ideology that sees declining birth rates is the most important issue facing our times. and that is with my friend June, Juniper, as she has known on the social medias, who is also the co-as to kill the computer, which again, we're going to be doing that B-Sweet crossover.

But if you're interested in finding out why so many people are so fucking obsessed with birth rates right now, we've been doing our best for the past half year or so to figure out who is propagating these narratives and why. I'm very proud of the show. And I think if you like any of our shows, you will enjoy. it as well. So again, ill-conceived in your favorite podcast client. And again, please listen to the worst of all possible worlds. And this is the only show that I host. You're already listening to it. Thank you. Consider supporting us on Patreon. Pre-order my book, The Highlands Burn. Comes out May 29th. And we also have a live show coming up in London on the same day. May 29th. If you can't make it,

it's perfectly fine. We're live streaming it. Nice. You can find those in the notes as well. Make sure you click on the right one to get the right tickets. You can't miss them. Until next time, if someone doesn't make eye contact with you, don't assault them with a samurai sword. That's your PSA.