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This week, I'm going to recommend the Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

These are, of course, older stories, but if you've never read them before, or listen to them,

I suppose, you'll be surprised to know they really do hold up.

They're a lot of fun, they're really interesting, and of course, there's always a great

mystery to wrap your head around.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy.

Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast, episode 354, elementary, my dear Okamoto.

Today, I would like to talk to you all about literature.

No, wait, don't delete the episode, I promise, this is going to be interesting.

You see, if your education in literature slash English slash whatever the

subject was called at your secondary school was anything like mine, it involved a lot of slogging

through the canon. The canon, with two ends instead of three, though parts of the scarlet letter

left me wishing for a siege engine I could shoot myself out of to get away from it,

is a shorthand term for the great works of literature, usually Western literature in American schools,

and I'm told in British and Canadian ones too.

...