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founding

Re: Japan. I highly recommend the 2024 version of Shogun. The scenery and acting are worth the price of admission. The Japanese cast, in particular Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga (the stand-in for Tokugawa Ieyasu founder of the eponymous dynasty), Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko (the translator), and Tadanobu Asano as Kashigi Yabushige, a subordinate samuri of Toranaga are just terrific. I think it gives a very good perspective on the motivations for Tokugawa policy.

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founding

I’ll second that recommendation. The original miniseries is good too, for that matter.

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founding

Read an essay last year by Patrick McKenzie on doing business in Japan and found it interesting and entertaining if nothing else. He recommends some books in the essay if one wants to understand Japan.

Essay: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

A couple of the books he recommends: https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Japanese-Society-Yoshio-Sugimoto/dp/1108724744/

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Common-Series-Institutional-Studies/dp/0822955105

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Razib, I recall you did an article or podcast where you answered common reader questions on genetics and have been having trouble finding it. I even tried asking your AI tool without luck. Do you remember doing something like this or am I making it up?

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I read your article about the rising status of Indian immigrants in the US as well as your discussion of the ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity of the population of India.

Your comments were particularly interesting to me because I recently read the new book by Abraham Verghese, “The Covenant of Water.”

As you probably know, the novel is about a multigenerational community of St Thomas Christians in Kerala. One family is affected by deafness, unsteadiness, and an inability to swim which ends up being due to an inherited genetic condition.

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