Reading Notes

In 1935, Shi Jianqiao shot Sun Chuanfang in a Buddhist hall in Tianjin to avenge her father, then scattered leaflets and surrendered. From her decade-long pursuit of revenge through three levels of Republican courts and a Nationalist pardon, this episode asks how traditional filial duty fared under modern criminal law.

What can one person do when the state uses textbooks to reshape memory of war? This episode follows historian Saburō Ienaga's three lawsuits over 32 years against revisions to accounts of Japan's wartime aggression, the Nanjing Massacre, and Unit 731, examining the boundaries among state screening, academic freedom, and responsibility for war.

'Governing China' Reading Notes

Reading notes on Animal Farm.