historyofjapan

Episode 430 - If the Wind Blows, Let it Blow

Added 2022-03-19 00:10:05 +0000 UTC

For some reason, once again Patreon's link functionality is proving a bit hit-or-miss. The episode and show notes are here, for what it's worth.

A few weeks back I wrote a newsletter about the research and writing process for this episode, and now you get to see the final product. Hopefully between the two this gives you some idea of how these episodes come together. It's not always that smooth of a journey (this one was comparatively straightforward), but broadly that's the process I've used for nine years or so now, with only a few alterations. For example, these days (thanks to my wonderful Patrons) I have more money to spend on books rather than relying as heavily on my pre-existing library/JSTOR/whatever I could convince friends at universities to copy and send to me.

Honestly, one of the things I didn't see coming about this episode was how little poetry I ended up discussing. That had kind of been my frame when I started putting it together (I envisoned it as "the life and poetry of Ikkyu"), but the poetry fell by the wayside because I found it just took up so much room to explain what made the guy such an unusual figure. It's definitely a bit of a loss, but unfortunately there wasn't really a way around it that I could see. I'll just have to find some other poets to talk about instead!