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This week, I'm going to recommend The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer.

I'm teaching my first philosophy class this marking period, and I've found Peter Singer to be one of the most accessible and most interesting philosophers out there today.

I don't always agree with all of his takes, of course, and neither do my students, but if you're looking for an interesting philosophical text that will provoke some very interesting discussion and debate,

you can't really do wrong with Peter Singer.

Go to audible trial.com slash Japan to claim your copy. Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 361, ABE, Part 1.

Well, here we are, at long last.

Back when I started this podcast, I thought a lot about how contemporary I wanted to get with my chosen topics.

I figured that one of the benefits of talking about history as opposed to politics is that it is

easier to have some distance from the subject and to work with what you know, as opposed to

entering into that dangerous world of making predictions and thinking about the future,

which as anyone who has ever tried to do it can tell you, is a difficult game to play.

The one exception, I figured, was that I would do

a retrospective on any prime ministers who left office while the show was going on. After all,

the PM has such an important role in defining the political conversation in Japan that it would

feel strange not to talk about it. And hey, it's always good to have an easy

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