How Japan’s Terrain Dictated Its Society

Japan’s history didn’t begin with the Sengoku warlords. This episode examines the geographical and institutional foundations that made the country what it was before Nobunaga picked up a sword — the mountain terrain that locked civilization into narrow coastal plains, the ocean currents that divided a prosperous southwest from a hungry northeast, and the slow collapse of imperial authority that left a vacuum three men would spend a century trying to fill.