Show Notes

This week, we review and analyze Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ (機動戦士ガンダムΖΖ) episode 44 - “Emary's Glory” (エマリー散華), discuss our first impressions, and provide commentary and research on the Japanese ballad form enka, and Thom's continuing research on the Tale of the Heike and it's influence on Double Zeta.

This episode includes Epilogue (Instrumental Version) by Josh Woodward, licensed under a CC-BY license.

- Books and articles Thom referenced:

平家物語 (The Tale of the Heike), trans. Royall Tyler. Penguin (2012).

Sources of Japanese Tradition volume one, compiled by Wm. Theodore de Bary, Donald Keene, George Tanabe, and Paul Varley. Columbia UP (1958, 2nd ed., 2001).

The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople, Susan Wise Bauer, W. W. Norton (2013).

The Cambridge History of Japan volume two, ed. by Delmer M. Brown, John Whitney Hall, Donald H. Shively, William H. McCullough, Marius B. Jansen, Kōzō Yamamura, Peter Duus. Cambridge UP (1988)

The Future and the Past: A Translation and Study of the Gukansho, an Interpretative History of Japan written in 1219, Delmer Brown and Ichiro Ishida. University of California Press (2021).

A Brief History of the Samurai, Jonathan Clements. Little, Brown Book Group (2013).

The Samurai: A Military History, Stephen Turnbull (1977).

- Brittanica entry for Minamoto no Yoritomo.

- Article covering the development of the Heian era's elite warrior class: "Bushi: A brief history."

- English translation of an order from the Emperor Kammu abolishing the levy system and calling on local magistrates to furnish guards from their families.

- Book about enka:

Yano, Christine Reiko. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Harvard Univ. Press, 2010.

- Wikipedia page about yojijukugo (四字熟語), 4-character idioms and phrases, including some common ones and their translations (異体同心 / いたいどうしん / itaidoushin among them).

Mobile Suit Breakdown is written, recorded, and produced within Lenapehoking, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Lenape, or Delaware, people. Before European settlers forced them to move west, the Lenape lived in New York City, New Jersey, and portions of New York State, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Connecticut. Lenapehoking is still the homeland of the Lenape diaspora, which includes communities living in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Ontario.

You can learn more about Lenapehoking, the Lenape people, and ongoing efforts to honor the relationship between the land and indigenous peoples by visiting the websites of the Delaware Tribe and the Manhattan-based Lenape Center. Listeners in the Americas and Oceania can learn more about the indigenous people of your area at https://native-land.ca/. We would like to thank The Lenape Center for guiding us in creating this living land acknowledgment.

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