July 25, 2022 • 46 mins
Margaret talks with comedian and podcast host Brodie Reed about Kaneko Fumiko and Kanno Suga, two Japanese anarchist women who did their best to end the lives of emperors and almost changed history.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did cool little stuff,
which I'm apparently supposed to introduce it that way. Uh,
this is a show that I'm already tired of coming
up with clever ways of introducing. And I'm your host,
part ploy and every week I tell you about the
people I have arbitrarily determined, as I guess this week
is Brodie Reid. Brodie, how are you doing? I'm great. Um,
(00:24):
I'm actually didn't say any full credits or anything, but
I'm actually a cool expert. I'm a professor down at
the University of Chill Hanks and go Cowabunga's and I'm
happy to be here with you to judge or whatever
it is. Okay, So at the end of this episode,
(00:45):
a you're gonna tell me is it like cool or not?
Is that they? Okay, let me tell you throughout the
whole episode. Okay, No, that I guess. That is why
we brought you on. And we've got Sophie on the
line as well. Who is our producer, Sophie? Do you
have any new Mono Soloa by ways to answer the
question of how are you doing? No? Okay, just checking. Okay,
(01:07):
So I'm really excited about this week's episode, Brodie, No one,
no one warned you what the episode is about, right, No,
I no? Excellent. I don't like spoilers, you know. Yeah, yeah, okay, Okay,
Well I'm excited about this week's episode because this week
I get to say about one of my favorite people
that I've ever run across, if you don't think, she's
going to be very sad, and a bunch of other
(01:29):
people too, some of whom are cool. And I say
basically every week that I love these people, and I
mean it every week. Um. I love all of my
podcast topics equally, I just love a little bit more
equally because this week I'm going to tell you a
story about some women in Japan about a hundred years
ago who had a problem. And they had a multitude
(01:50):
of problems, like the horrendous treatment of workers and of
women and of the Korean subjects of the Japanese Empire.
But these women, ten years apart from each other, they
never met, they came up with really similar solutions to
their problems. Brody, is there a problem that can't be
solved by throwing a bomb at an emperor? Um? Let
me think, Yeah, there's a couple of problems. Um fracking, Um,
(02:15):
that's one. Um, low wages, that's that's one. Um. Most Actually,
I'm gonna say most problems can't be solved by throwing
a bomb at an emperor. Oh yeah, all right, well, um, well,
it depends on how you look at it, because I mean,
if your problems are caused by the emperor, listen, I'm
(02:35):
pro bomb, I'm pro bomb choice. I just want to
put that out there. I like blowing stuff up. Uh yeah.
And and actually, one of the things that you know,
learning about most history it writes to bomb, is that
doesn't actually solve the problem. But you can't fault people
for trying. And although these people had actually succeeded, uh,
they might have done made the world a better place,
(02:57):
almost on the killing Hitler level of good. Because today
I'm going to talk about two women who tried to
introduce the wonders of gunpowder to the divine Emperor of Japan.
It's the stories of Kano Suga and Kaniko Fumiko, two
Japanese women who are sentenced to death for trying to
explode parts of the imperial family. And they were both poets,
they were both anarchists, and in other ways they could
(03:19):
have been more different from each other. So we're going
to start this story where all things start, or at
least some anime starts with the Maiji Meiji restoration. I
see why I was booked for this episode. Do you
wanna do you want to explain to the listener why
you were Probably I'm a big nerd I, Um, I'm
(03:40):
a comedian, but I also, um, I'm a big I
guess Japanophile. Um, honestly, I'm a web I have a
show called The Dark Web. Um. I speak Japanese also,
so stuff like that. Yeah cool, um, yeah, that that
is why I presented this topick. And people were like, yeah,
(04:01):
now that I know what we were talking about, Because
first when you said bomb, I was just like, oh,
I know two famous ones, and I was just like,
those ones are bad. But now that we're talking about
anarchists in little bombs, little guys, Now now I'm on board. No, No,
this actually makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought
about this context. There were some other people who used
bombs in very bad ways. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, it gets.
(04:23):
The indiscriminate part is where it gets. And a lot
of them are are good. Some of the most famous
bombs are actually Japanese bomb mombs from Mario. From there, Um,
you know that that that one bomb in um acera,
we were again bringing it back to anime. Well, I
want to imagine all of the bombs that are going
(04:44):
to be included today as the little Mario bombs. UM good.
So okay. So the Meiji Restoration, which you probably know
more about than I do, which is is probably good. Mh.
I'm not going to do it justice. Right. It's this
really big thing that happened, the Meiji Restoration, but I
don't know actually that much about it. I learned about
(05:04):
it in the context of the stuff I do know
more about, which is some women who like the little
Mario bombs. Yeah, essentially, I can give you like a
cliff notes. It was UM this transitional period from around
the time when feudal Japan ended, when um Japan was unified.
There was um an era of relative peace and order
(05:27):
and stuff like that, and then the Meiji Restoration was
kind of getting rid of the samurai class in general,
UM modernizing UM the country brought a lot of good things,
economic prosperity, educational proxperity. So people regarded as a good thing. Um,
and there's you know, there's still swords, so it's it's
(05:49):
all good. Yeah. It is kind of an interesting I
think that's part of the reason people like it esthetically,
as you get the nice like there's still swords involved
in some of these fights exactly. Yeah, and then and
then and a lot of people, you write, a lot
of people view this as a as a positive thing.
There are a lot of forms happening at this time. Yeah,
(06:10):
but also kind of a nationalist twins to it. Yeah. Yeah.
And there's this idea that basically the imperial West was
looking to the east, and so Japan was like, okay,
depends on who you ask. Either Japan was like we
need to be prepared to defend ourselves from the imperialists
in the West, or Japan was like we need to
join the imperialist West and started in our own empire. Um.
(06:32):
So you get some vestiges of Western liberalism during all
this time. You get a cabinet system, you get a constitution,
but it's not a democracy. The constitution was a gift
from the emperor to the people, and he could change
it whenever he wants and cool cool, yeah, yeah, exactly,
and it it borrowed some stuff from the West, right,
but it was also at the same time uniquely and
(06:53):
fiercely Japanese. But when you introduce capitalism to a country,
you also introduce anti capitalism. Yeah, that's the son of me,
Robin my poems together, and much like the government borrowed
some elements from the West and then rooted that in tradition,
the anti capitalist did the same thing. Socialism hits Japan
(07:13):
in the nine late nineteenth century, and it wasn't long
before a ton of these early socialists figure out exactly
what kind of socialists they are is that they're anarchists.
The first introduction to anarchism came from abroad. A lot
of it was inspired by people like the industrial workers
of the world and the United States, or conversations with
Russian philosopher Peter Kopakin, but it found roots immediately in
(07:35):
Japanese history. The Japanese anarchists got really excited about how
it tied into horizontal features of village communalism in their history,
and in particular, there was this eighteenth century samurai philosopher
guy who didn't like samurai named Ando Schoiki, and he's
immediately adopted as a forebearer to the anarchists, like retroactively
(07:58):
because he was this philosopher. He rejected Buddhism and Confucism,
he hated feudalism, he hated bureaucracy and law, and he
believed all people were equal. In fact, all people were
the same person. And okay, yeah, yeah, I know, I
kind of get where he's coming. Yeah, totally. Um, he's
really interesting to me. I I, you know, I Okay.
(08:20):
So he believes that people should only produce and consume
what they needed. Anybody also believe that there's gonna be
a messiah who is not him, which is a big
advantage if you're gonna talk about messiah stuff. He's not
the messiah. The Massoia is going to comment usher everyone
into a better world. Yeah, that way you can like
kind of spread an idea and you could be like,
maybe it's you and audience gets involved, you know, yeah,
totally totally, Maybe it's you who's listening to this right now,
(08:42):
you know exactly. He also wasn't a lot of fun
he wrote down and he's kind of making fun of
Buddhism when he does this, but he writes down five
terrible crimes and ten offenses. Even though he doesn't like law,
he writes down his laws, and some of the laws
I think are cool, laws like don't become a leader
of men consuming consuming greedily is bad. We should give
(09:05):
up warrior class authority. Establishing borders is a big no no.
But there are also ones like um, no music and
no playing the game go. So I can't I can't
live without you know what? Yeah, yeah, So don't don't
go there, don't touch my go and and I don't know.
(09:26):
So this is this guy where they're like they're excited
about about and though and this isn't about him though
this podcast, because to my knowledge, he didn't explode anyone
who needed a good exploding. But onto this stage of
early socialism and anarchism steps our first hero, Kano Suga.
She's born, she's the daughter of a mine operator. We
(09:48):
we don't know a ton about her life, but the
closest we have is that she wrote all these semi
autobiographical stories. She was a fiction writer and a journalist
and all this other stuff, and so she would write
these books that are like, here's a story about a
daughter of a mine operator who became a socialist, you know,
and you're like, oh, okay, So a lot of what
we know about her biography is like we think she's
(10:09):
telling the truth about herself. Here it gets messy. It's
like comedy. So I understand, Yeah, I guess the comedy
basically tell stories that are like sort of true, present
a part of yourself. Absolutely, we're just very good liars.
That's how jokes are. And so everything's chill in her
early life for a few years. Then when she's eight,
(10:29):
her dad's business fails. When she's ten, her mom dies,
and then she gets a classic evil stepmother who's really
really bad. I tend to sort of shy away from
talking about sexual violence on this show, but when I
when necessary, I'll bring it up. When Suga's fifteen, her
stepmom convinces a minor to rape her. Um. So this
(10:52):
was a kind of formative experience for Suga's when might
imagine and the socialists at the time, we're actually really
solid feminists, or at least some of them were. And
so the first time she runs across socialism, and it
isn't an essay about how rape victims shouldn't have to
carry the guilt of their own rape around, how it's
not their fault. This resonates with her for some obvious reason,
(11:13):
and she she starts diving in to see what else
these folks have to say. When she's seventeen, she's like,
I need to get the hell out of my house.
So she marries this random dude she doesn't like, just
this random business guy, just to get out of the
house and get away from evil stepmom. Okay, that's not cool,
but I know, like, well it doesn't She sticks around
(11:37):
for a moment. She she marries this guy, she lives
in for three years. Its act one. Step mom leaves
the family three years later, so so he goes like, oh,
I gotta go take care of my dad. I'm going
to divorce you and leaves. Her husband moves back in
with her invalid dad. That's cool, and shows up and
(11:57):
supports the family and which is also you know, a
thing to be doing as a you know, early like
this's like nineteen o one is at this point, I
think she gets a job as a journalist the local
morning paper, and she supports her family, and it's kind
of a big deal because there's not a lot of
women journalists in Japan. At this point, she starts writing
fiction and nonfiction. Her real dream is to become a novelist.
(12:20):
I really like her as a novelist, you know, and
then to continue in her like early this is you know,
informative stuff she gets. She wants social change, and she
doesn't quite know what she's looking for. So the first
thing she tries is she gets baptized Protestant and then
keeps performing Buddhist rituals and just sort of does both.
The Japanese Russian War breaks out nineteen o four, the
(12:41):
Christians and the Socialists are the two ones fighting against
the militarism, and she's a pacifist, but she starts hanging
out with more Socialists because they're all buds in this
this whole thing, mhm. And then big change for her.
The inciting incident was some thing called the red Flag incident.
I'm wondering if you've run across this. Every time I
(13:03):
look at Japanese history, everything is the the something incident,
you know, like every event. It's really cool. Yeah, I
don't think I know much about this one specifically. Um,
I've heard of it, but I don't really know what
it is. Yeah, And that's the thing is like, because
it it makes all of these things seem like really
big deals, and I think they were right, but it's
(13:24):
just like, you know, it's like if every time we
had a protest people were like, oh, this is the
you know the Yeah, it's gonna be hard to tell
people a hundred years from now, Oh the summer of
was really tense. Actually, yeah, yeah, it's totally right because
because we can't easily just call it like, you know,
the yeah, they're gonna be like, we can't breathe, we
(13:45):
don't know what you're doing. It's a good point. Okay,
So the Red Flag incident is this big anarchists and
socialist rally that like shouldn't have been a big deal, honestly.
I mean it was a big rally, right, And it
starts off fine, there's just lefties there, they're waving red flags,
they're singing songs, they're chanting Anna an anarchy, which is
(14:07):
a sick chant nice and then the police attack, and
so this is why it becomes a big deal. The
police attack and the crowd has fights back, and there's
this hour long brawl and the protesters win they drive
back the police. However, the police then round up everyone
(14:29):
involved in the organizing of the of the well, not
the brawl, but the demonstration and throw them in jail
and torture them. And Suga, who was at the rally
but wasn't an organizer, she goes to the station to
find out what happened. She sees that everyone's been tortured,
and they arrest her, so they put her on trial.
Also uh. She spends two months in jail waiting for
(14:51):
her trial, and she's found not guilty, but a ton
of people are found guilty, and a ton of people,
like huge chunks of the anarchists and the Slist movement
gets sent to prison for a year or two for
holding a demonstration and seeing all this happen, right, seeing
the crowd attacks, seeing people needing to defend themselves, seeing
the arrest he is tortured, and I'm sure being arrested
(15:14):
herself for basically nothing. She's like, piece isn't gonna cut it, Pacifism,
this isn't what I'm into anymore, and she she jumps
over from socialism to anarchism. Although all the leftist groups
were pretty much friends at the time, which is sort
of hard for me to wrap my head around now,
but I appreciate and and so so now she's like
(15:35):
in it, she starts dating this guy named Kotaku. She's
dating a whole bunch of people during this time, which
is actually kind of part of a lot of the
feminist stuff that they all fight for actually is to
be like, don't judge us based on who we date.
Um hm, very nice. Unfortunately, then throughout history people are like, oh, yeah,
she's Kodaku's boyfriend, and I'm like, I a girlfriend whatever. Um,
(15:57):
And I'm like, okay, whatever. And in Kodaku he the
guy who like brings anarchism to Japan in the first place,
and okay, yeah I've heard that. Yeah yeah he um yeah,
and he was cool. There's still a big communist um.
All that stuff is still pretty big in Japan in
terms of like the most you know, Western developed countries.
They're kind of like leading the charge a little bit,
(16:19):
which is pretty um still yeah yeah, Actually, I'm like,
I need to learn more about what's going on currently
with a lot of this stuff there. Um. One of
the problems of getting like lost in his history stuff
is something like oh yeah, no, I can tell you
about what happened in right, yeah, And this causes poly drama. Right.
(16:40):
The fact that she starts dating Kotakum. He divorces his
wife and moves in with her, and she's everyone thinks
she's still dating this this guy who's in jail, but
she's kind of over him, she's been over him for
a while, and everyone's mad at her for abandoning her
her jail boyfriend who isn't her boyfriend. So lots of drama.
And one of the things that really like about learning
(17:00):
about this polydrama stuff is that people get so hung
up on this idea that people in the past were
so different from us now, and that people in different
countries and different from us, And I'm like, no, this
is just the same ship, you know, like, yeah, absolutely,
it's just messy, even the jail part. I'm just like, yeah,
that's that sounds like some people, and yeah, yeah, it's
totally exactly. And so now she's she's convinced, and she's
(17:22):
an anarchist and a feminist, and her feminism isn't just
oh she's a woman and an activist. It was very
self conscious. She wrote a lot about gender exploitation. She
focused on basically she was mad at society for focusing
on women's attractiveness. She fought back against um, the clothes
that women were being forced to wear and the at
(17:42):
the time at least, so the social status of women
in Japan was subordinate to men going back at least
as far as the seventeenth century. And I'm not trying
to like single out Japan here, obviously, I'm not sure,
you know, like, oh yeah, that pretty much the whole time,
going back to the seventeenth century. There's this Japanese confusion
scholar who said women should obey their husbands as husbands
should obey their feudal lord, which I mean, it just
sounds like Western you know, all the same ship that's
(18:04):
happening in the West. Two widows weren't allowed to remarry.
Your husband could execute you for cheating on him. The
Meiji Restoration, for all its reforms, didn't really touch the
status of women, and which is annoying because as always,
women were involved in the reform movement and then got
left out when it came time to pass out the
reforms um and then some ways got worse in two
(18:26):
women were forbidden from making political speeches by women weren't
allowed to attend political speeches. So Suga, she's committed. She
cruis up with some factory workers, I think it might
be time to tell you about something else that matters.
So if he's not in her head. So we're supported
on this podcast by a variety of sponsors, and some
(18:49):
of the sponsors are luck of the draw, whatever, random advertisers.
But we're also sponsored by good things. That's our that's
our plan here is to be sponsored by good things,
like for example, our our primary sponsor is the the
concept of the potato potatoes are very good individual not
no individual brands. Maybe home grown potatoes that you grow yourself.
That's like the primary sponsor. But I'm wondering if it
(19:11):
starts you very solid yields vegetable you know, when you're
thinking about the post apocalypse potatoes, which I'm thinking about.
That's basically all I think about is the nineteenth century
and apocalypse. Is there anything you would like to be
sponsored by in today's episode, something good and wholesome? Yeah,
(19:32):
I guess so I want to be sponsored by getting
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it's at whether it's at a grocery store, whether it's
at the park, whether it's at the local swimming hole.
If there's a kid and there between the ages of
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(19:53):
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Use promo code toddler at check out. But but don't
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(20:13):
way to get the It doesn't count if you get
it that way. And also these other ads. Okay, and
we are back and we are talking about how Suga
is sick of being in jail and sick of a
lot of things about the empire. So sick a cigaret boyfriends, Yeah, totally. Yeah. Um,
(20:39):
it comes up a lot in a lot of these
things where you're like, oh, these I like it because
it's like all these women are like, I don't want
to be treated by like ship by my boyfriend, so
I will leave him. She would have done great on Twitter.
She really missed the boat she had, the socialism she had,
the making fun of her boyfriends being Polly. She was
a woman for the Instagra am Aaron. She missed so
(21:02):
but she crews up with some factory workers and they
decide they start talking more right, They're just like talking
about what's really the matter. And one of the things
that they hit upon is this emperor guy. They think
he's mortal, not this divine otherworldly being like he gets
presented right, m And they didn't have a lot of
choice in there. There range of tactics because if you
(21:26):
have a rally, you get beaten and tortured if you
start a newspaper. And for a while there the socialist
newspapers were fine, and that was like a main outlet
they all have, but then they started all getting shut
down and find as soon as they come out, how
much of a newspaper was it like a zine? You know,
I can't tell because like whenever I read about like
old socialist papers and stuff, I'm like, how much is
(21:48):
this like a literary journal and a magazine? How much
is this? Like I you know, found a print you
know that the Black Panthers had just like it was
like half like poems and stuff, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
no matter what if I if I was involved, I'd
be drawing a cartoon, all right, I'd be contributing the
least literary value for sure. No, No, I mean cartoons
(22:12):
are very good. I hope they had cartoons and some
of these, um I've seen actually some of the old
socialist and anarchist cartoons. Uh, they're really fun, um interesting.
I need to see some of those. I think I've
seen some that are like on YouTube and they're like
restored and they're just like so esoteric that I'm like,
I don't get with this Russian ship is. I need
(22:33):
someone in a in a community college setting to explain
it to me, But I'll get around him. I actually
really like the anti ones, the like ones that are like,
you know, it's the bearded immigrant with a knife with
a bomb, like standing behind the statue of liberty and
it's like, don't let these people into the country. They're
gonna bring in anarchy and murderous all. Yeah. Every once
(22:56):
in a while, the um, the conservatives in the political
cartoon spectrum just draw something that is really rad and
spot on. I like when they do our work for us,
yeah and so okay, so they do. So they're like, okay,
we can't have newspapers, we can't we can't publish our scenes,
and we can have rallies. So they fall back onto
(23:16):
everyone's favorite last resort or maybe sometimes first resort, the
bomb and the first threat to the emperor's life actually
came from seven from a Japanese American newspaper in California.
There's a Japanese American newspaper, anarchist newspaper called Revolution, which
wasn't called Revolution in English, was called Revolution in Japan,
(23:38):
which I didn't write down, but it um it published
an open letter to the emperor that basically was like,
so you're a tyrant and we're gonna kill you. And
that was their open letter to the emperor. Cool because
they don't really make open letters like that anymore, you know,
um no, And you know, of course it makes sense
(23:59):
that they were able to do this there on the
other side of an ocean, under a different legal jurisdiction.
But what were they called? Kaku? That sounds right? That
actually that that sounds right. Yeah, I honestly, this is terrible.
But I like, I wrote down a lot of things,
and I wrote down the Japanese and then I was like,
then more words that I don't have to pronounce because
(24:20):
I don't want to. I don't like pronouncing words incorrectly.
I don't feel like it's polite. Japanese is actually really
pretty easy to pronounce. It's a lot easier than people think.
You just have to learn um, just like a couple
idio secrecies. But essentially all the syllables are pronounced like
(24:40):
one way. It's it's the only way I could speak
to people, honestly, because you kind of gain but it
takes sense. And actually a lot of the names in
this are easier for me than a lot of the
like when I'm like reading Russian names or something, I
have a bit more of a hard time. Huh, yeah,
I know that that makes sense. He's pretty fanetic. So
(25:01):
they decide they start plotting. Sometimes Suga and her friends
are plotting around nine and it was a reasonably simple
plan that they came up with. The plan was that
they were going to get a bomb and then they
were gonna throw it at the emperor and then there
wouldn't be never step one exactly, and they like they
totally knew that, like step four was die right. They
(25:22):
were like, we're not coming out of this, you know, um.
But they were, especially Sugo was like pretty much into
being a martyr. And I don't know if this comes
from her like for a into Christendom or what she
was trying to get out of that pretty much, you know,
you're doing bad. Whereas her her boyfriend, he was like
(25:42):
he started off being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, bombs and stuff.
I'm cool, I'm a radical anarchist. I started all this
like I'm cool, I'm down. And then he was like,
this actually sounds like we're all gonna die. I don't
want to do it anymore, and I can't blame him, Like,
but it turns out in a sense, isn't enough to
save you at this particular juncture, however, so so he
(26:05):
backs out and everyone else is in, and they pretty
much they're like, all right, we're all friends with like
miners and and you know, it's actually a fairly working
class movement. You know, she herself is not particularly working class,
but a lot of people in movement are. So they're
just basically go find miners. They're like, hey, can you
give us bombs? You use bombs for work, And they
get a bomb, and the government's onto them, so they
(26:27):
start playing hot potato with the bump, like I don't
want to hold onto the bump. You hold onto the bum.
Take it to the other friend's house. No, take it
to this other prison's house. As like, because the police
are closing in on them, and then one other friends
snitches them all out. I just want to say this
podcast is not sponsored by hot Potato. That's right, that's right.
As an example of a potato, we are not sponsored
(26:49):
by We're also not sponsored by Sunishing your friends out
facts and the police raid a house, I would say
we're not sponsored by the police, but I believe we
have actually been sponsored by police. How what do you
mean they snuck on and ad are they using some
of their their budget on you can? We have it
(27:15):
like set up to filter out like politics, government things
like that. They slipped in under business, yeah, which is
like yeah, because when they arrest people as businesses using
which is like, which is like not the most shocking category,
they could have slipped it under to be honest, because yeah, yeah,
(27:36):
totally we protect business. Yeah. Anyways, anyways, yeah, and this
is not actually ad break time, We're just complaining about responses.
So yeah, So the police raid a house after the
snitchery and they find some raw bomb ingredients and they
basically just run around and arrest all the prominent anarchists
(27:56):
they can to try and charge everyone conspiracy. But the
police actually have a problem all the all the anarchists
already in jail, paring through them in jail for the
Red Flag incident, and they're so upset that they can't
charge these people with conspiracy. So actually, the people who
got arrested for throwing the demonstration are kind of the
people who survive in the end because they were in jail,
(28:17):
so they were safe from being thrown in jail for
worse things. Included among the arrestees are for Buddhist monks,
and twenty six people in the end get put on
trial for conspiracy. Basically, it's it's Suga. Suga is actually like, well,
I'm actually one of the few people who's actually doing this.
The rest of the people are completely innocent. And at
(28:38):
the end she's like at the end, she's like, do
you have People are like, do you have any regrets?
And she's like, yeah, I'm I don't regret trying to
kill the emperor. That was a perfect and logical thing.
I regret or I'm sad that this is being used
against innocent people, you know, right, Basically, yeah, totally, I
regret that you caught me before I could do this.
(28:59):
Um and yeah, and and and she actually, i mean,
when she's on trial, She's basically like, yeah, I fucking
did it, or I wanted to do it, you know.
And she she actually talked about this a little bit
at length. She was like, I feel I'm paraphrasing here,
She's like, I feel sorry that the emperor has to die.
He's actually kind of nice compared to most tyrants and emperors,
(29:19):
but but he's never and so he's responsible for the
exploitation of the masses, and he's got to die. Uh.
The emperor, of course, had actually reached the exact opposite conclusion.
He he reached the conclusion that Suga is who should die,
and unfortunately he had more maybe there's maybe they could
both die actually, and and Kodaku, the boyfriend he gets
(29:44):
sentenced to, he's uh, and they actually the judges and
ship are all assuming it's the boyfriend in charge. And
even though he had backed out the conspiracy, and so
one of the main things Suga had to like fight
for was like, I'm not just a fucking girlfriend, like
I actually am conspirator here and her defense lawyer and
(30:04):
this just really right. When I read this, I was like,
I don't understand that Japanese legicial system. It does not
map one to one to the American judicial system. Her
defense lawyer believed that Suga and three of the others
should be executed, that boyfriend and another guy should get
life imprisonment, five more should get five years, and fifteen
were innocent. That is the defense lawyer's position. And there's
(30:28):
no evidence for any of this crime. I mean there's like,
there's some circumstantial evidence, there's like the snitchery and some
bomb materials, but especially for the like wider conspiracy, there's
just there rolling and nothing. And twenty four of them
gets sentenced to death, so the defense attorney does not
get his way, and the emperor then commute half of
(30:50):
them to life in prison. So half of them get well,
you just get to spend the rest of your life
in prison. He really looking after his people, you know, uh,
much like the looking at who looks after their people.
Are awkward ad transitions. This show is brought to you
by awkward ad transitions like this one. We're back so
(31:21):
so Suga and it's actually now she's she's been writing
this whole time. She's been writing her whole adult life.
She's been writing all this stuff. She's written all these
semi autobiographical novellas, and she's but while she's waiting to die,
she spends her time writing poetry and writing a diary,
and she spends a lot of her time also reading
about the nihilists and anarchists and other folks who have
(31:43):
preceded her to the gallows across the world, and basically
like finding comfort in that. And the newspapers they make
this big deal out of it. They're like, look at
this self indulgent asshole. That's like super vain lady who
just wants to be a martyr. And you know, but
I'm like, how could you do anything else? Right? You're
you're sitting there, You're in prison, You're going to get executed.
(32:06):
What the hell else are you gonna do? I was like,
read about these other people get executed, you know, exactly
what else is you going to read? Romance? And they
all live happily ever after. Um, I wonder if she
wrote any romance novels. I mean, maybe she probably autobiographically
did some about some relationships. I'm sure that's why there
(32:29):
was some tension. She probably sub sub wrote. I think
that that's probably it. Yeah, erotic friend fan fiction gets
a lot of people in trouble, you know. Um, And
so she's like, all right, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna
embrace it. She embraced it. And one of her poems
was born in a very small land. I sacrifice my
(32:49):
small life for a small hope. In all my reading,
I read through a ton of her different like really
like I guess I'm gonna fucking die poems and like
the good Um, I wouldn't recommend it to poets, right,
but if if you end up in that situation, the
good will to draw from, you know. Yeah, it sounds
(33:12):
very goss. I'm actually goss too, So I love that.
I think most of the old anarchists poets were all goths. Um. Yeah,
they definitely wore a lot of black. Yeah. So she
was hanged at eight o'clock in the morning on January eleven.
It was a week after her sentence sing It was
(33:33):
the day after all of her co defendants had been hanged.
She didn't get told that other people have been hanged.
She didn't even get told that she was going to
be hanged that day. She was. She was twenty nine
years old, and she was the first woman political prisoner
executed by the Japanese government, So she broke some glass
ceilings and her last words rule. Her last words were
just I die for the cause bonds I and which
(33:58):
is you know a war cry that has been using
a lot of different contexts. Yeah, it's a badass war
crying more badass it sounds in English. Yeah, that's a
good Yeah, totally. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if you
do or not, But do you know more about that?
By any chance? Um bonzai, Yeah, that's what um. I
(34:19):
think that's one of the things that um um suicide
fighters would uh say when they were like flying in
World War Two, things like that. Kama Kazi's Kama kazi
means kama kaze, if you don't know, is an extremely
interesting term, very important term in Japan. It means divine wind.
(34:40):
Kami means God and kaz means wind. And the reason
uh divine wind is such an important UM thing for
them is because Japan, at several times in its developing
history was um invaded by Mongols, essentially um invaded by
forces that were like huge and we're absolutely going to
(35:05):
um destroy and take over Japan. And then both times
those invasions happened, there were these freak huge storms. UM
that like sank all of their ships and made them
retreat um and that happened twice, so they really funk
with divine way over there. Well, I like it too,
(35:27):
write because it's like, okay, if this is also used
the war cry for Japanese nationalists in World War Two,
and yet it's being used thirty years earlier by you know,
a Japanese socialist, Like I love that, Like I love that.
It's like, this is not culture isn't the same as nationalism,
you know, like like coming from and participating in a
culture is not the same as like I. Therefore him
(35:50):
the same as like, you know, the Japanese nationalists and
imperial forces. Absolutely. So, she's hanged, and she's buried in
a boot temple cemetery by friends, and she's buried next
to her her younger sister, who had been killed a
few years earlier by this thing that kills literally of
the characters on this show who don't die violently, that
(36:12):
great harvester of souls, the dear friend of the pod tuberculosis. Interesting,
I didn't know this, but if you read history, it's
just a long slew of people dying by tuberculosis. That
is how everyone dies, It makes it makes sense. Suga
herself actually, during most of the time she was doing
all this conspiring, was Hella sick with tuberculosis, and she
(36:37):
she survived it well sort of, right, yeah, sort of.
I hope she didn't give it to other people. Yeah,
that's true. Yeah, And so some historians call this whole
trial a frame up because most of these people had
nothing to do with the conspiracy. Right, it was absolutely
politically motivated to try and break the Left, and they
(36:58):
hadn't even made any concrete plan yet, they were just
considering it. But but Suga really had been trying to
figure out, like how do we turn this guy into
a puddle of blood? And I get the impression she
wouldn't be much excited for history trying to claim her
innocence because one of her whole things, which will come
up in the second half of the show too, is
people fighting as as women for the right to be
(37:19):
like seen as powerful enough to be have committed the
crimes that they committed. And so it wasn't that she
was innocent. I think that it's just what she did
was perfectly reasonable. Yeah, she she loves to be guilty.
She's basically like a rapper. Essentially, she's got she's got
a real two park mentality, Okay. And then in contrast
(37:42):
with another one of her co defendants, there's a Zen
Buddhist monk who's an anarcho socialist named Uchi Yamagudo, who
is one of the few Buddhist leaders who talked ship
publicly about the new imperialist projects of Japan. Like during
this time that they start their conversation of Korea. Well,
I mean they started in a while back, but starts
some unting it really and this guy is cool. I
(38:03):
really like this guy. He's only a side character in this,
but I'm gonna tell you about him because I like him.
He confronted others Zen Buddhists who claimed that you were
born into low social class because of karma. He was like, no,
that's nonsense, right, And and he fought against corruption and
the faith, like people were buying abbot ships and stuff,
and and he was an abot himself with a temple,
(38:24):
and his temple gave everything away to the poor. And
they used their printing apparatus to like print papers and
pamphlets for the socialists. So like if ne Jrasine printed,
you go to the Buddhist temple. And he also wrote
that the Vamperor was not divine that actually, yes, he
could trace back his lineage years to a bunch of
bandits who went and centralized power by killing everyone. And yes,
(38:50):
I really fucking like him. And he probably had absolutely
nothing to do with the bomb plot, Like most of
the stuff I read is like he was completely innocent, um,
but he had to die because he was an anarchist Buddhist.
But there's another version of the story that I run
across that he had a cash of bombs, like ready
to go, and he was like, so I got the bombs,
(39:10):
Come over, I'll show you where the bombs are, you know.
And I don't quite believe that one. I think it
would be he'd be cool guy either way, right, Um, No,
that'd be that'd be the fiction of the totally totally.
But as he walks up to the scaffold, the records
say that quote, he gave not the slightest hint of
(39:31):
emotional distress. Rather, he appeared serene, even cheerful, so much
that the attendant prison chaplain bowed as he passed. And
that's just like, well, if you're gonna be a fucking
Buddhist monk and you know, like, I don't know, it
makes me really happy. His abbot ship was rescinded by
by his faith when he was convicted, but in the
soto Zen his his faith restored his status posthumously and
(39:55):
were like, well, actually it's really clear that he was
on the right side of history on this one. That's
very cool. And after these executions, Japanese socialism enters its
winter period. Uh, just cool because the winter period and
then it blooms again maybe ten years later, and activists
basically went into hibernation. Everyone who survived all of this
(40:16):
was like, we're gonna we're gonna take a step back
and figure out what's really how we're gonna handle this,
and we don't don't, I'll just die. All these magazines
get shut down or they start disguising themselves as purely
literary journals. So yeah, like the like you're saying, you know,
there's just like lots of poetry, lots of your political cartoons.
I really appreciate that you wrote political cartoons for them. Yeah,
(40:39):
thank you. You know, just just my hand some stuff,
some shown in type things and you like hit some
nice political commentary in there. But that wasn't like the point,
you know. No, it's more about the magic system, which
is weirdly revolves around explosive I couldn't tell you why.
But with World War One and in Japan's involvement, the
(41:03):
the left blooms again. In seventeen, anarchists forms an industrial
union of printing and metal workers, the Faithful Friends Society.
Soon after another printing union was set up. Study groups form,
and you get this broad united front of socialist anarchists
working in the labor movement. Anarchism was kind of the
only game in town at this point for radical politics.
That's why I haven't like talked about communists as much. Right,
(41:25):
you get you get the Communist Party in and Um,
and this is the time period where communist and anarchists
really stopped being friends. And this happens there. The communists
run everyone out of the large labor federation. You get
this Bolshevik versus anarchist split. But the crew of folks
on M I talked about next time, they don't really
(41:47):
have anything to do with all that. Even though they're
anarchists there, they're not part of the Japanese labor movement.
Their nihilists and their Korean independence activists, and again not
to build her up too much, but one of them
is one of my favorite people of all time. Kind
of go food ma com mm hmm. So it's interesting
to hear when there's like groups of nihilists. I'm just like,
(42:07):
what do you guys, we'll talk about it. We'll talk
about it. This doesn't matter. Everybody, thanks for coming. Let's
go over the minutes of the last meeting. Everything talks.
I mean, apparently they would have like there's actually a
movie about the next one called Anarchists from Colony, and
they would have these meetings and they were like, should
we do the following. I think it was like, should
(42:28):
we go like extort some people had one person's like yes, definitely,
and one person is like, no, we shouldn't. And then
finally someone's like, well, we should each do as our
own individual will desires, and those who wish to go
extort people go extore people, and those who wish to
don't don't. It's just gonna say, it's interesting, that's one
way you can run it. And I thought about that.
(42:49):
So when we come back on Wednesday, I'm going to
tell you about one of my favorite love stories and yeah,
the end of part one. So is it cool? Are
we cool? Brought? What's the vibe? Um, it's extremely cool.
I'll be honest with you guys. Um, I'm only imagining
these people dressing in black. Um, probably dressed like the
(43:10):
Matrix wasn't out, but they're probably dressing a little bit
like the Matrix. Um, they've got you know, leather jackets
and likes and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, at least
some of them know parkour. Suga definitely learned a little
bit of parkour, just just for reasons, just like we're
gonna parkour this bomb into the palace or whatever. Um.
(43:32):
I definitely wish I saw that mission go down. But um,
very cool. Um, you know, being a political prisoners cool.
Writing poetry when you're gonna die is cool. All of
this is very cool in goth And you know it's
got samurai swords in it somewhere, so you know, I
love it. Yeah, we did it, speak speaking things that
(43:55):
are cool in goth Do you have any things you'd
like to plug? Um plug not necessarily at the moment.
I've been working on a lot of things kind of
behind the scenes. So unless you're like an executive at
HBO Max. I don't really have much to plug other
than if you live in l A, come see me
(44:17):
do stand up. I do it all the time. So
you can check out my Instagram ao bro bro um
uh and Twitter as well too. That's where I mostly
spend my time talking ship and hey, if you enjoy
talking shit, boy do I do it a lot. Um.
You could also check out If you're a huge nerd
like me, you can check out my podcast The Dark
(44:39):
Weep with my friend Cody. He is like an amazing writer,
writes for Marvel and stuff like that. Um. Yeah, that's
pretty much it. And just you know, bea off and
do crimes and you know, be gay and kill people
or yeah, exactly cool. That's uh. We'll be back when
(45:03):
what Wednesday? Wednesday for two Yes, we will be back
Wednesday until the heat death of the universe. Or they
changed the system of dates and the days of the
week and you could do anything, Supreme Court. Let me
tell you. They add a new work day to the week,
and they convinced the right way. That is like, no,
(45:24):
this isn't this great. You still get a two day weekend,
but you still get to work more. This is this
is good yeah, exactly. Don't you want the gas prices
to come down? We're laughing, but I don't think it
sounds that unrealistic. No, it really doesn't, It really doesn't.
It's too real. We're laughing in a way that's going
(45:50):
to sound queens by the time this comes out. And
they actually added three days to the week, and two
of them you have to work in one of them.
You're just in jail. Yeah, yeah, loves jail day. You
don't you hate America? What are you doing on jail day? Oh? Yeah,
that's right. I want to hang out. No, I'm in jail. Yeah,
(46:15):
I can't. I see you all soon. Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People who did cool little stuff,
which I'm apparently supposed to introduce it that way. Uh,
this is a show that I'm already tired of coming
up with clever ways of introducing. And I'm your host,
part ploy and every week I tell you about the
people I have arbitrarily determined, as I guess this week
is Brodie Reid. Brodie, how are you doing? I'm great. Um,
(00:24):
I'm actually didn't say any full credits or anything, but
I'm actually a cool expert. I'm a professor down at
the University of Chill Hanks and go Cowabunga's and I'm
happy to be here with you to judge or whatever
it is. Okay, So at the end of this episode,
(00:45):
a you're gonna tell me is it like cool or not?
Is that they? Okay, let me tell you throughout the
whole episode. Okay, No, that I guess. That is why
we brought you on. And we've got Sophie on the
line as well. Who is our producer, Sophie? Do you
have any new Mono Soloa by ways to answer the
question of how are you doing? No? Okay, just checking. Okay,
(01:07):
So I'm really excited about this week's episode, Brodie, No one,
no one warned you what the episode is about, right, No,
I no? Excellent. I don't like spoilers, you know. Yeah, yeah, okay, Okay,
Well I'm excited about this week's episode because this week
I get to say about one of my favorite people
that I've ever run across, if you don't think, she's
going to be very sad, and a bunch of other
(01:29):
people too, some of whom are cool. And I say
basically every week that I love these people, and I
mean it every week. Um. I love all of my
podcast topics equally, I just love a little bit more
equally because this week I'm going to tell you a
story about some women in Japan about a hundred years
ago who had a problem. And they had a multitude
(01:50):
of problems, like the horrendous treatment of workers and of
women and of the Korean subjects of the Japanese Empire.
But these women, ten years apart from each other, they
never met, they came up with really similar solutions to
their problems. Brody, is there a problem that can't be
solved by throwing a bomb at an emperor? Um? Let
me think, Yeah, there's a couple of problems. Um fracking, Um,
(02:15):
that's one. Um, low wages, that's that's one. Um. Most Actually,
I'm gonna say most problems can't be solved by throwing
a bomb at an emperor. Oh yeah, all right, well, um, well,
it depends on how you look at it, because I mean,
if your problems are caused by the emperor, listen, I'm
(02:35):
pro bomb, I'm pro bomb choice. I just want to
put that out there. I like blowing stuff up. Uh yeah.
And and actually, one of the things that you know,
learning about most history it writes to bomb, is that
doesn't actually solve the problem. But you can't fault people
for trying. And although these people had actually succeeded, uh,
they might have done made the world a better place,
(02:57):
almost on the killing Hitler level of good. Because today
I'm going to talk about two women who tried to
introduce the wonders of gunpowder to the divine Emperor of Japan.
It's the stories of Kano Suga and Kaniko Fumiko, two
Japanese women who are sentenced to death for trying to
explode parts of the imperial family. And they were both poets,
they were both anarchists, and in other ways they could
(03:19):
have been more different from each other. So we're going
to start this story where all things start, or at
least some anime starts with the Maiji Meiji restoration. I
see why I was booked for this episode. Do you
wanna do you want to explain to the listener why
you were Probably I'm a big nerd I, Um, I'm
(03:40):
a comedian, but I also, um, I'm a big I
guess Japanophile. Um, honestly, I'm a web I have a
show called The Dark Web. Um. I speak Japanese also,
so stuff like that. Yeah cool, um, yeah, that that
is why I presented this topick. And people were like, yeah,
(04:01):
now that I know what we were talking about, Because
first when you said bomb, I was just like, oh,
I know two famous ones, and I was just like,
those ones are bad. But now that we're talking about
anarchists in little bombs, little guys, Now now I'm on board. No, No,
this actually makes a lot of sense. I hadn't thought
about this context. There were some other people who used
bombs in very bad ways. Um yeah, yeah, yeah, it gets.
(04:23):
The indiscriminate part is where it gets. And a lot
of them are are good. Some of the most famous
bombs are actually Japanese bomb mombs from Mario. From there, Um,
you know that that that one bomb in um acera,
we were again bringing it back to anime. Well, I
want to imagine all of the bombs that are going
(04:44):
to be included today as the little Mario bombs. UM good.
So okay. So the Meiji Restoration, which you probably know
more about than I do, which is is probably good. Mh.
I'm not going to do it justice. Right. It's this
really big thing that happened, the Meiji Restoration, but I
don't know actually that much about it. I learned about
(05:04):
it in the context of the stuff I do know
more about, which is some women who like the little
Mario bombs. Yeah, essentially, I can give you like a
cliff notes. It was UM this transitional period from around
the time when feudal Japan ended, when um Japan was unified.
There was um an era of relative peace and order
(05:27):
and stuff like that, and then the Meiji Restoration was
kind of getting rid of the samurai class in general,
UM modernizing UM the country brought a lot of good things,
economic prosperity, educational proxperity. So people regarded as a good thing. Um,
and there's you know, there's still swords, so it's it's
(05:49):
all good. Yeah. It is kind of an interesting I
think that's part of the reason people like it esthetically,
as you get the nice like there's still swords involved
in some of these fights exactly. Yeah, and then and
then and a lot of people, you write, a lot
of people view this as a as a positive thing.
There are a lot of forms happening at this time. Yeah,
(06:10):
but also kind of a nationalist twins to it. Yeah. Yeah.
And there's this idea that basically the imperial West was
looking to the east, and so Japan was like, okay,
depends on who you ask. Either Japan was like we
need to be prepared to defend ourselves from the imperialists
in the West, or Japan was like we need to
join the imperialist West and started in our own empire. Um.
(06:32):
So you get some vestiges of Western liberalism during all
this time. You get a cabinet system, you get a constitution,
but it's not a democracy. The constitution was a gift
from the emperor to the people, and he could change
it whenever he wants and cool cool, yeah, yeah, exactly,
and it it borrowed some stuff from the West, right,
but it was also at the same time uniquely and
(06:53):
fiercely Japanese. But when you introduce capitalism to a country,
you also introduce anti capitalism. Yeah, that's the son of me,
Robin my poems together, and much like the government borrowed
some elements from the West and then rooted that in tradition,
the anti capitalist did the same thing. Socialism hits Japan
(07:13):
in the nine late nineteenth century, and it wasn't long
before a ton of these early socialists figure out exactly
what kind of socialists they are is that they're anarchists.
The first introduction to anarchism came from abroad. A lot
of it was inspired by people like the industrial workers
of the world and the United States, or conversations with
Russian philosopher Peter Kopakin, but it found roots immediately in
(07:35):
Japanese history. The Japanese anarchists got really excited about how
it tied into horizontal features of village communalism in their history,
and in particular, there was this eighteenth century samurai philosopher
guy who didn't like samurai named Ando Schoiki, and he's
immediately adopted as a forebearer to the anarchists, like retroactively
(07:58):
because he was this philosopher. He rejected Buddhism and Confucism,
he hated feudalism, he hated bureaucracy and law, and he
believed all people were equal. In fact, all people were
the same person. And okay, yeah, yeah, I know, I
kind of get where he's coming. Yeah, totally. Um, he's
really interesting to me. I I, you know, I Okay.
(08:20):
So he believes that people should only produce and consume
what they needed. Anybody also believe that there's gonna be
a messiah who is not him, which is a big
advantage if you're gonna talk about messiah stuff. He's not
the messiah. The Massoia is going to comment usher everyone
into a better world. Yeah, that way you can like
kind of spread an idea and you could be like,
maybe it's you and audience gets involved, you know, yeah,
totally totally, Maybe it's you who's listening to this right now,
(08:42):
you know exactly. He also wasn't a lot of fun
he wrote down and he's kind of making fun of
Buddhism when he does this, but he writes down five
terrible crimes and ten offenses. Even though he doesn't like law,
he writes down his laws, and some of the laws
I think are cool, laws like don't become a leader
of men consuming consuming greedily is bad. We should give
(09:05):
up warrior class authority. Establishing borders is a big no no.
But there are also ones like um, no music and
no playing the game go. So I can't I can't
live without you know what? Yeah, yeah, So don't don't
go there, don't touch my go and and I don't know.
(09:26):
So this is this guy where they're like they're excited
about about and though and this isn't about him though
this podcast, because to my knowledge, he didn't explode anyone
who needed a good exploding. But onto this stage of
early socialism and anarchism steps our first hero, Kano Suga.
She's born, she's the daughter of a mine operator. We
(09:48):
we don't know a ton about her life, but the
closest we have is that she wrote all these semi
autobiographical stories. She was a fiction writer and a journalist
and all this other stuff, and so she would write
these books that are like, here's a story about a
daughter of a mine operator who became a socialist, you know,
and you're like, oh, okay, So a lot of what
we know about her biography is like we think she's
(10:09):
telling the truth about herself. Here it gets messy. It's
like comedy. So I understand, Yeah, I guess the comedy
basically tell stories that are like sort of true, present
a part of yourself. Absolutely, we're just very good liars.
That's how jokes are. And so everything's chill in her
early life for a few years. Then when she's eight,
(10:29):
her dad's business fails. When she's ten, her mom dies,
and then she gets a classic evil stepmother who's really
really bad. I tend to sort of shy away from
talking about sexual violence on this show, but when I
when necessary, I'll bring it up. When Suga's fifteen, her
stepmom convinces a minor to rape her. Um. So this
(10:52):
was a kind of formative experience for Suga's when might
imagine and the socialists at the time, we're actually really
solid feminists, or at least some of them were. And
so the first time she runs across socialism, and it
isn't an essay about how rape victims shouldn't have to
carry the guilt of their own rape around, how it's
not their fault. This resonates with her for some obvious reason,
(11:13):
and she she starts diving in to see what else
these folks have to say. When she's seventeen, she's like,
I need to get the hell out of my house.
So she marries this random dude she doesn't like, just
this random business guy, just to get out of the
house and get away from evil stepmom. Okay, that's not cool,
but I know, like, well it doesn't She sticks around
(11:37):
for a moment. She she marries this guy, she lives
in for three years. Its act one. Step mom leaves
the family three years later, so so he goes like, oh,
I gotta go take care of my dad. I'm going
to divorce you and leaves. Her husband moves back in
with her invalid dad. That's cool, and shows up and
(11:57):
supports the family and which is also you know, a
thing to be doing as a you know, early like
this's like nineteen o one is at this point, I
think she gets a job as a journalist the local
morning paper, and she supports her family, and it's kind
of a big deal because there's not a lot of
women journalists in Japan. At this point, she starts writing
fiction and nonfiction. Her real dream is to become a novelist.
(12:20):
I really like her as a novelist, you know, and
then to continue in her like early this is you know,
informative stuff she gets. She wants social change, and she
doesn't quite know what she's looking for. So the first
thing she tries is she gets baptized Protestant and then
keeps performing Buddhist rituals and just sort of does both.
The Japanese Russian War breaks out nineteen o four, the
(12:41):
Christians and the Socialists are the two ones fighting against
the militarism, and she's a pacifist, but she starts hanging
out with more Socialists because they're all buds in this
this whole thing, mhm. And then big change for her.
The inciting incident was some thing called the red Flag incident.
I'm wondering if you've run across this. Every time I
(13:03):
look at Japanese history, everything is the the something incident,
you know, like every event. It's really cool. Yeah, I
don't think I know much about this one specifically. Um,
I've heard of it, but I don't really know what
it is. Yeah, And that's the thing is like, because
it it makes all of these things seem like really
big deals, and I think they were right, but it's
(13:24):
just like, you know, it's like if every time we
had a protest people were like, oh, this is the
you know the Yeah, it's gonna be hard to tell
people a hundred years from now, Oh the summer of
was really tense. Actually, yeah, yeah, it's totally right because
because we can't easily just call it like, you know,
the yeah, they're gonna be like, we can't breathe, we
(13:45):
don't know what you're doing. It's a good point. Okay,
So the Red Flag incident is this big anarchists and
socialist rally that like shouldn't have been a big deal, honestly.
I mean it was a big rally, right, And it
starts off fine, there's just lefties there, they're waving red flags,
they're singing songs, they're chanting Anna an anarchy, which is
(14:07):
a sick chant nice and then the police attack, and
so this is why it becomes a big deal. The
police attack and the crowd has fights back, and there's
this hour long brawl and the protesters win they drive
back the police. However, the police then round up everyone
(14:29):
involved in the organizing of the of the well, not
the brawl, but the demonstration and throw them in jail
and torture them. And Suga, who was at the rally
but wasn't an organizer, she goes to the station to
find out what happened. She sees that everyone's been tortured,
and they arrest her, so they put her on trial.
Also uh. She spends two months in jail waiting for
(14:51):
her trial, and she's found not guilty, but a ton
of people are found guilty, and a ton of people,
like huge chunks of the anarchists and the Slist movement
gets sent to prison for a year or two for
holding a demonstration and seeing all this happen, right, seeing
the crowd attacks, seeing people needing to defend themselves, seeing
the arrest he is tortured, and I'm sure being arrested
(15:14):
herself for basically nothing. She's like, piece isn't gonna cut it, Pacifism,
this isn't what I'm into anymore, and she she jumps
over from socialism to anarchism. Although all the leftist groups
were pretty much friends at the time, which is sort
of hard for me to wrap my head around now,
but I appreciate and and so so now she's like
(15:35):
in it, she starts dating this guy named Kotaku. She's
dating a whole bunch of people during this time, which
is actually kind of part of a lot of the
feminist stuff that they all fight for actually is to
be like, don't judge us based on who we date.
Um hm, very nice. Unfortunately, then throughout history people are like, oh, yeah,
she's Kodaku's boyfriend, and I'm like, I a girlfriend whatever. Um,
(15:57):
And I'm like, okay, whatever. And in Kodaku he the
guy who like brings anarchism to Japan in the first place,
and okay, yeah I've heard that. Yeah yeah he um yeah,
and he was cool. There's still a big communist um.
All that stuff is still pretty big in Japan in
terms of like the most you know, Western developed countries.
They're kind of like leading the charge a little bit,
(16:19):
which is pretty um still yeah yeah, Actually, I'm like,
I need to learn more about what's going on currently
with a lot of this stuff there. Um. One of
the problems of getting like lost in his history stuff
is something like oh yeah, no, I can tell you
about what happened in right, yeah, And this causes poly drama. Right.
(16:40):
The fact that she starts dating Kotakum. He divorces his
wife and moves in with her, and she's everyone thinks
she's still dating this this guy who's in jail, but
she's kind of over him, she's been over him for
a while, and everyone's mad at her for abandoning her
her jail boyfriend who isn't her boyfriend. So lots of drama.
And one of the things that really like about learning
(17:00):
about this polydrama stuff is that people get so hung
up on this idea that people in the past were
so different from us now, and that people in different
countries and different from us, And I'm like, no, this
is just the same ship, you know, like, yeah, absolutely,
it's just messy, even the jail part. I'm just like, yeah,
that's that sounds like some people, and yeah, yeah, it's
totally exactly. And so now she's she's convinced, and she's
(17:22):
an anarchist and a feminist, and her feminism isn't just
oh she's a woman and an activist. It was very
self conscious. She wrote a lot about gender exploitation. She
focused on basically she was mad at society for focusing
on women's attractiveness. She fought back against um, the clothes
that women were being forced to wear and the at
(17:42):
the time at least, so the social status of women
in Japan was subordinate to men going back at least
as far as the seventeenth century. And I'm not trying
to like single out Japan here, obviously, I'm not sure,
you know, like, oh yeah, that pretty much the whole time,
going back to the seventeenth century. There's this Japanese confusion
scholar who said women should obey their husbands as husbands
should obey their feudal lord, which I mean, it just
sounds like Western you know, all the same ship that's
(18:04):
happening in the West. Two widows weren't allowed to remarry.
Your husband could execute you for cheating on him. The
Meiji Restoration, for all its reforms, didn't really touch the
status of women, and which is annoying because as always,
women were involved in the reform movement and then got
left out when it came time to pass out the
reforms um and then some ways got worse in two
(18:26):
women were forbidden from making political speeches by women weren't
allowed to attend political speeches. So Suga, she's committed. She
cruis up with some factory workers, I think it might
be time to tell you about something else that matters.
So if he's not in her head. So we're supported
on this podcast by a variety of sponsors, and some
(18:49):
of the sponsors are luck of the draw, whatever, random advertisers.
But we're also sponsored by good things. That's our that's
our plan here is to be sponsored by good things,
like for example, our our primary sponsor is the the
concept of the potato potatoes are very good individual not
no individual brands. Maybe home grown potatoes that you grow yourself.
That's like the primary sponsor. But I'm wondering if it
(19:11):
starts you very solid yields vegetable you know, when you're
thinking about the post apocalypse potatoes, which I'm thinking about.
That's basically all I think about is the nineteenth century
and apocalypse. Is there anything you would like to be
sponsored by in today's episode, something good and wholesome? Yeah,
(19:32):
I guess so I want to be sponsored by getting
randomly smiled at by a toddler. You don't know whether
it's at whether it's at a grocery store, whether it's
at the park, whether it's at the local swimming hole.
If there's a kid and there between the ages of
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(19:53):
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than that. Excellent? Is that the That is our new sponsor.
Use promo code toddler at check out. But but don't
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(20:13):
way to get the It doesn't count if you get
it that way. And also these other ads. Okay, and
we are back and we are talking about how Suga
is sick of being in jail and sick of a
lot of things about the empire. So sick a cigaret boyfriends, Yeah, totally. Yeah. Um,
(20:39):
it comes up a lot in a lot of these
things where you're like, oh, these I like it because
it's like all these women are like, I don't want
to be treated by like ship by my boyfriend, so
I will leave him. She would have done great on Twitter.
She really missed the boat she had, the socialism she had,
the making fun of her boyfriends being Polly. She was
a woman for the Instagra am Aaron. She missed so
(21:02):
but she crews up with some factory workers and they
decide they start talking more right, They're just like talking
about what's really the matter. And one of the things
that they hit upon is this emperor guy. They think
he's mortal, not this divine otherworldly being like he gets
presented right, m And they didn't have a lot of
choice in there. There range of tactics because if you
(21:26):
have a rally, you get beaten and tortured if you
start a newspaper. And for a while there the socialist
newspapers were fine, and that was like a main outlet
they all have, but then they started all getting shut
down and find as soon as they come out, how
much of a newspaper was it like a zine? You know,
I can't tell because like whenever I read about like
old socialist papers and stuff, I'm like, how much is
(21:48):
this like a literary journal and a magazine? How much
is this? Like I you know, found a print you
know that the Black Panthers had just like it was
like half like poems and stuff, which is pretty cool. Yeah,
no matter what if I if I was involved, I'd
be drawing a cartoon, all right, I'd be contributing the
least literary value for sure. No, No, I mean cartoons
(22:12):
are very good. I hope they had cartoons and some
of these, um I've seen actually some of the old
socialist and anarchist cartoons. Uh, they're really fun, um interesting.
I need to see some of those. I think I've
seen some that are like on YouTube and they're like
restored and they're just like so esoteric that I'm like,
I don't get with this Russian ship is. I need
(22:33):
someone in a in a community college setting to explain
it to me, But I'll get around him. I actually
really like the anti ones, the like ones that are like,
you know, it's the bearded immigrant with a knife with
a bomb, like standing behind the statue of liberty and
it's like, don't let these people into the country. They're
gonna bring in anarchy and murderous all. Yeah. Every once
(22:56):
in a while, the um, the conservatives in the political
cartoon spectrum just draw something that is really rad and
spot on. I like when they do our work for us,
yeah and so okay, so they do. So they're like, okay,
we can't have newspapers, we can't we can't publish our scenes,
and we can have rallies. So they fall back onto
(23:16):
everyone's favorite last resort or maybe sometimes first resort, the
bomb and the first threat to the emperor's life actually
came from seven from a Japanese American newspaper in California.
There's a Japanese American newspaper, anarchist newspaper called Revolution, which
wasn't called Revolution in English, was called Revolution in Japan,
(23:38):
which I didn't write down, but it um it published
an open letter to the emperor that basically was like,
so you're a tyrant and we're gonna kill you. And
that was their open letter to the emperor. Cool because
they don't really make open letters like that anymore, you know,
um no, And you know, of course it makes sense
(23:59):
that they were able to do this there on the
other side of an ocean, under a different legal jurisdiction.
But what were they called? Kaku? That sounds right? That
actually that that sounds right. Yeah, I honestly, this is terrible.
But I like, I wrote down a lot of things,
and I wrote down the Japanese and then I was like,
then more words that I don't have to pronounce because
(24:20):
I don't want to. I don't like pronouncing words incorrectly.
I don't feel like it's polite. Japanese is actually really
pretty easy to pronounce. It's a lot easier than people think.
You just have to learn um, just like a couple
idio secrecies. But essentially all the syllables are pronounced like
(24:40):
one way. It's it's the only way I could speak
to people, honestly, because you kind of gain but it
takes sense. And actually a lot of the names in
this are easier for me than a lot of the
like when I'm like reading Russian names or something, I
have a bit more of a hard time. Huh, yeah,
I know that that makes sense. He's pretty fanetic. So
(25:01):
they decide they start plotting. Sometimes Suga and her friends
are plotting around nine and it was a reasonably simple
plan that they came up with. The plan was that
they were going to get a bomb and then they
were gonna throw it at the emperor and then there
wouldn't be never step one exactly, and they like they
totally knew that, like step four was die right. They
(25:22):
were like, we're not coming out of this, you know, um.
But they were, especially Sugo was like pretty much into
being a martyr. And I don't know if this comes
from her like for a into Christendom or what she
was trying to get out of that pretty much, you know,
you're doing bad. Whereas her her boyfriend, he was like
(25:42):
he started off being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, bombs and stuff.
I'm cool, I'm a radical anarchist. I started all this
like I'm cool, I'm down. And then he was like,
this actually sounds like we're all gonna die. I don't
want to do it anymore, and I can't blame him, Like,
but it turns out in a sense, isn't enough to
save you at this particular juncture, however, so so he
(26:05):
backs out and everyone else is in, and they pretty
much they're like, all right, we're all friends with like
miners and and you know, it's actually a fairly working
class movement. You know, she herself is not particularly working class,
but a lot of people in movement are. So they're
just basically go find miners. They're like, hey, can you
give us bombs? You use bombs for work, And they
get a bomb, and the government's onto them, so they
(26:27):
start playing hot potato with the bump, like I don't
want to hold onto the bump. You hold onto the bum.
Take it to the other friend's house. No, take it
to this other prison's house. As like, because the police
are closing in on them, and then one other friends
snitches them all out. I just want to say this
podcast is not sponsored by hot Potato. That's right, that's right.
As an example of a potato, we are not sponsored
(26:49):
by We're also not sponsored by Sunishing your friends out
facts and the police raid a house, I would say
we're not sponsored by the police, but I believe we
have actually been sponsored by police. How what do you
mean they snuck on and ad are they using some
of their their budget on you can? We have it
(27:15):
like set up to filter out like politics, government things
like that. They slipped in under business, yeah, which is
like yeah, because when they arrest people as businesses using
which is like, which is like not the most shocking category,
they could have slipped it under to be honest, because yeah, yeah,
(27:36):
totally we protect business. Yeah. Anyways, anyways, yeah, and this
is not actually ad break time, We're just complaining about responses.
So yeah, So the police raid a house after the
snitchery and they find some raw bomb ingredients and they
basically just run around and arrest all the prominent anarchists
(27:56):
they can to try and charge everyone conspiracy. But the
police actually have a problem all the all the anarchists
already in jail, paring through them in jail for the
Red Flag incident, and they're so upset that they can't
charge these people with conspiracy. So actually, the people who
got arrested for throwing the demonstration are kind of the
people who survive in the end because they were in jail,
(28:17):
so they were safe from being thrown in jail for
worse things. Included among the arrestees are for Buddhist monks,
and twenty six people in the end get put on
trial for conspiracy. Basically, it's it's Suga. Suga is actually like, well,
I'm actually one of the few people who's actually doing this.
The rest of the people are completely innocent. And at
(28:38):
the end she's like at the end, she's like, do
you have People are like, do you have any regrets?
And she's like, yeah, I'm I don't regret trying to
kill the emperor. That was a perfect and logical thing.
I regret or I'm sad that this is being used
against innocent people, you know, right, Basically, yeah, totally, I
regret that you caught me before I could do this.
(28:59):
Um and yeah, and and and she actually, i mean,
when she's on trial, She's basically like, yeah, I fucking
did it, or I wanted to do it, you know.
And she she actually talked about this a little bit
at length. She was like, I feel I'm paraphrasing here,
She's like, I feel sorry that the emperor has to die.
He's actually kind of nice compared to most tyrants and emperors,
(29:19):
but but he's never and so he's responsible for the
exploitation of the masses, and he's got to die. Uh.
The emperor, of course, had actually reached the exact opposite conclusion.
He he reached the conclusion that Suga is who should die,
and unfortunately he had more maybe there's maybe they could
both die actually, and and Kodaku, the boyfriend he gets
(29:44):
sentenced to, he's uh, and they actually the judges and
ship are all assuming it's the boyfriend in charge. And
even though he had backed out the conspiracy, and so
one of the main things Suga had to like fight
for was like, I'm not just a fucking girlfriend, like
I actually am conspirator here and her defense lawyer and
(30:04):
this just really right. When I read this, I was like,
I don't understand that Japanese legicial system. It does not
map one to one to the American judicial system. Her
defense lawyer believed that Suga and three of the others
should be executed, that boyfriend and another guy should get
life imprisonment, five more should get five years, and fifteen
were innocent. That is the defense lawyer's position. And there's
(30:28):
no evidence for any of this crime. I mean there's like,
there's some circumstantial evidence, there's like the snitchery and some
bomb materials, but especially for the like wider conspiracy, there's
just there rolling and nothing. And twenty four of them
gets sentenced to death, so the defense attorney does not
get his way, and the emperor then commute half of
(30:50):
them to life in prison. So half of them get well,
you just get to spend the rest of your life
in prison. He really looking after his people, you know, uh,
much like the looking at who looks after their people.
Are awkward ad transitions. This show is brought to you
by awkward ad transitions like this one. We're back so
(31:21):
so Suga and it's actually now she's she's been writing
this whole time. She's been writing her whole adult life.
She's been writing all this stuff. She's written all these
semi autobiographical novellas, and she's but while she's waiting to die,
she spends her time writing poetry and writing a diary,
and she spends a lot of her time also reading
about the nihilists and anarchists and other folks who have
(31:43):
preceded her to the gallows across the world, and basically
like finding comfort in that. And the newspapers they make
this big deal out of it. They're like, look at
this self indulgent asshole. That's like super vain lady who
just wants to be a martyr. And you know, but
I'm like, how could you do anything else? Right? You're
you're sitting there, You're in prison, You're going to get executed.
(32:06):
What the hell else are you gonna do? I was like,
read about these other people get executed, you know, exactly
what else is you going to read? Romance? And they
all live happily ever after. Um, I wonder if she
wrote any romance novels. I mean, maybe she probably autobiographically
did some about some relationships. I'm sure that's why there
(32:29):
was some tension. She probably sub sub wrote. I think
that that's probably it. Yeah, erotic friend fan fiction gets
a lot of people in trouble, you know. Um, And
so she's like, all right, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna
embrace it. She embraced it. And one of her poems
was born in a very small land. I sacrifice my
(32:49):
small life for a small hope. In all my reading,
I read through a ton of her different like really
like I guess I'm gonna fucking die poems and like
the good Um, I wouldn't recommend it to poets, right,
but if if you end up in that situation, the
good will to draw from, you know. Yeah, it sounds
(33:12):
very goss. I'm actually goss too, So I love that.
I think most of the old anarchists poets were all goths. Um. Yeah,
they definitely wore a lot of black. Yeah. So she
was hanged at eight o'clock in the morning on January eleven.
It was a week after her sentence sing It was
(33:33):
the day after all of her co defendants had been hanged.
She didn't get told that other people have been hanged.
She didn't even get told that she was going to
be hanged that day. She was. She was twenty nine
years old, and she was the first woman political prisoner
executed by the Japanese government, So she broke some glass
ceilings and her last words rule. Her last words were
just I die for the cause bonds I and which
(33:58):
is you know a war cry that has been using
a lot of different contexts. Yeah, it's a badass war
crying more badass it sounds in English. Yeah, that's a
good Yeah, totally. Yeah. Actually, I don't know if you
do or not, But do you know more about that?
By any chance? Um bonzai, Yeah, that's what um. I
(34:19):
think that's one of the things that um um suicide
fighters would uh say when they were like flying in
World War Two, things like that. Kama Kazi's Kama kazi
means kama kaze, if you don't know, is an extremely
interesting term, very important term in Japan. It means divine wind.
(34:40):
Kami means God and kaz means wind. And the reason
uh divine wind is such an important UM thing for
them is because Japan, at several times in its developing
history was um invaded by Mongols, essentially um invaded by
forces that were like huge and we're absolutely going to
(35:05):
um destroy and take over Japan. And then both times
those invasions happened, there were these freak huge storms. UM
that like sank all of their ships and made them
retreat um and that happened twice, so they really funk
with divine way over there. Well, I like it too,
(35:27):
write because it's like, okay, if this is also used
the war cry for Japanese nationalists in World War Two,
and yet it's being used thirty years earlier by you know,
a Japanese socialist, Like I love that, Like I love that.
It's like, this is not culture isn't the same as nationalism,
you know, like like coming from and participating in a
culture is not the same as like I. Therefore him
(35:50):
the same as like, you know, the Japanese nationalists and
imperial forces. Absolutely. So, she's hanged, and she's buried in
a boot temple cemetery by friends, and she's buried next
to her her younger sister, who had been killed a
few years earlier by this thing that kills literally of
the characters on this show who don't die violently, that
(36:12):
great harvester of souls, the dear friend of the pod tuberculosis. Interesting,
I didn't know this, but if you read history, it's
just a long slew of people dying by tuberculosis. That
is how everyone dies, It makes it makes sense. Suga
herself actually, during most of the time she was doing
all this conspiring, was Hella sick with tuberculosis, and she
(36:37):
she survived it well sort of, right, yeah, sort of.
I hope she didn't give it to other people. Yeah,
that's true. Yeah, And so some historians call this whole
trial a frame up because most of these people had
nothing to do with the conspiracy. Right, it was absolutely
politically motivated to try and break the Left, and they
(36:58):
hadn't even made any concrete plan yet, they were just
considering it. But but Suga really had been trying to
figure out, like how do we turn this guy into
a puddle of blood? And I get the impression she
wouldn't be much excited for history trying to claim her
innocence because one of her whole things, which will come
up in the second half of the show too, is
people fighting as as women for the right to be
(37:19):
like seen as powerful enough to be have committed the
crimes that they committed. And so it wasn't that she
was innocent. I think that it's just what she did
was perfectly reasonable. Yeah, she she loves to be guilty.
She's basically like a rapper. Essentially, she's got she's got
a real two park mentality, Okay. And then in contrast
(37:42):
with another one of her co defendants, there's a Zen
Buddhist monk who's an anarcho socialist named Uchi Yamagudo, who
is one of the few Buddhist leaders who talked ship
publicly about the new imperialist projects of Japan. Like during
this time that they start their conversation of Korea. Well,
I mean they started in a while back, but starts
some unting it really and this guy is cool. I
(38:03):
really like this guy. He's only a side character in this,
but I'm gonna tell you about him because I like him.
He confronted others Zen Buddhists who claimed that you were
born into low social class because of karma. He was like, no,
that's nonsense, right, And and he fought against corruption and
the faith, like people were buying abbot ships and stuff,
and and he was an abot himself with a temple,
(38:24):
and his temple gave everything away to the poor. And
they used their printing apparatus to like print papers and
pamphlets for the socialists. So like if ne Jrasine printed,
you go to the Buddhist temple. And he also wrote
that the Vamperor was not divine that actually, yes, he
could trace back his lineage years to a bunch of
bandits who went and centralized power by killing everyone. And yes,
(38:50):
I really fucking like him. And he probably had absolutely
nothing to do with the bomb plot, Like most of
the stuff I read is like he was completely innocent, um,
but he had to die because he was an anarchist Buddhist.
But there's another version of the story that I run
across that he had a cash of bombs, like ready
to go, and he was like, so I got the bombs,
(39:10):
Come over, I'll show you where the bombs are, you know.
And I don't quite believe that one. I think it
would be he'd be cool guy either way, right, Um, No,
that'd be that'd be the fiction of the totally totally.
But as he walks up to the scaffold, the records
say that quote, he gave not the slightest hint of
(39:31):
emotional distress. Rather, he appeared serene, even cheerful, so much
that the attendant prison chaplain bowed as he passed. And
that's just like, well, if you're gonna be a fucking
Buddhist monk and you know, like, I don't know, it
makes me really happy. His abbot ship was rescinded by
by his faith when he was convicted, but in the
soto Zen his his faith restored his status posthumously and
(39:55):
were like, well, actually it's really clear that he was
on the right side of history on this one. That's
very cool. And after these executions, Japanese socialism enters its
winter period. Uh, just cool because the winter period and
then it blooms again maybe ten years later, and activists
basically went into hibernation. Everyone who survived all of this
(40:16):
was like, we're gonna we're gonna take a step back
and figure out what's really how we're gonna handle this,
and we don't don't, I'll just die. All these magazines
get shut down or they start disguising themselves as purely
literary journals. So yeah, like the like you're saying, you know,
there's just like lots of poetry, lots of your political cartoons.
I really appreciate that you wrote political cartoons for them. Yeah,
(40:39):
thank you. You know, just just my hand some stuff,
some shown in type things and you like hit some
nice political commentary in there. But that wasn't like the point,
you know. No, it's more about the magic system, which
is weirdly revolves around explosive I couldn't tell you why.
But with World War One and in Japan's involvement, the
(41:03):
the left blooms again. In seventeen, anarchists forms an industrial
union of printing and metal workers, the Faithful Friends Society.
Soon after another printing union was set up. Study groups form,
and you get this broad united front of socialist anarchists
working in the labor movement. Anarchism was kind of the
only game in town at this point for radical politics.
That's why I haven't like talked about communists as much. Right,
(41:25):
you get you get the Communist Party in and Um,
and this is the time period where communist and anarchists
really stopped being friends. And this happens there. The communists
run everyone out of the large labor federation. You get
this Bolshevik versus anarchist split. But the crew of folks
on M I talked about next time, they don't really
(41:47):
have anything to do with all that. Even though they're
anarchists there, they're not part of the Japanese labor movement.
Their nihilists and their Korean independence activists, and again not
to build her up too much, but one of them
is one of my favorite people of all time. Kind
of go food ma com mm hmm. So it's interesting
to hear when there's like groups of nihilists. I'm just like,
(42:07):
what do you guys, we'll talk about it. We'll talk
about it. This doesn't matter. Everybody, thanks for coming. Let's
go over the minutes of the last meeting. Everything talks.
I mean, apparently they would have like there's actually a
movie about the next one called Anarchists from Colony, and
they would have these meetings and they were like, should
we do the following. I think it was like, should
(42:28):
we go like extort some people had one person's like yes, definitely,
and one person is like, no, we shouldn't. And then
finally someone's like, well, we should each do as our
own individual will desires, and those who wish to go
extort people go extore people, and those who wish to
don't don't. It's just gonna say, it's interesting, that's one
way you can run it. And I thought about that.
(42:49):
So when we come back on Wednesday, I'm going to
tell you about one of my favorite love stories and yeah,
the end of part one. So is it cool? Are
we cool? Brought? What's the vibe? Um, it's extremely cool.
I'll be honest with you guys. Um, I'm only imagining
these people dressing in black. Um, probably dressed like the
(43:10):
Matrix wasn't out, but they're probably dressing a little bit
like the Matrix. Um, they've got you know, leather jackets
and likes and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, at least
some of them know parkour. Suga definitely learned a little
bit of parkour, just just for reasons, just like we're
gonna parkour this bomb into the palace or whatever. Um.
(43:32):
I definitely wish I saw that mission go down. But um,
very cool. Um, you know, being a political prisoners cool.
Writing poetry when you're gonna die is cool. All of
this is very cool in goth And you know it's
got samurai swords in it somewhere, so you know, I
love it. Yeah, we did it, speak speaking things that
(43:55):
are cool in goth Do you have any things you'd
like to plug? Um plug not necessarily at the moment.
I've been working on a lot of things kind of
behind the scenes. So unless you're like an executive at
HBO Max. I don't really have much to plug other
than if you live in l A, come see me
(44:17):
do stand up. I do it all the time. So
you can check out my Instagram ao bro bro um
uh and Twitter as well too. That's where I mostly
spend my time talking ship and hey, if you enjoy
talking shit, boy do I do it a lot. Um.
You could also check out If you're a huge nerd
like me, you can check out my podcast The Dark
(44:39):
Weep with my friend Cody. He is like an amazing writer,
writes for Marvel and stuff like that. Um. Yeah, that's
pretty much it. And just you know, bea off and
do crimes and you know, be gay and kill people
or yeah, exactly cool. That's uh. We'll be back when
(45:03):
what Wednesday? Wednesday for two Yes, we will be back
Wednesday until the heat death of the universe. Or they
changed the system of dates and the days of the
week and you could do anything, Supreme Court. Let me
tell you. They add a new work day to the week,
and they convinced the right way. That is like, no,
(45:24):
this isn't this great. You still get a two day weekend,
but you still get to work more. This is this
is good yeah, exactly. Don't you want the gas prices
to come down? We're laughing, but I don't think it
sounds that unrealistic. No, it really doesn't, It really doesn't.
It's too real. We're laughing in a way that's going
(45:50):
to sound queens by the time this comes out. And
they actually added three days to the week, and two
of them you have to work in one of them.
You're just in jail. Yeah, yeah, loves jail day. You
don't you hate America? What are you doing on jail day? Oh? Yeah,
that's right. I want to hang out. No, I'm in jail. Yeah,
(46:15):
I can't. I see you all soon. Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts on cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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