Sengoku Jidai: Age of the Warring States

Joe Gustin and Liam Oritz built this podcast around one of the most dramatic periods in Japanese history: the Sengoku Jidai, or the Age of the Warring States, roughly spanning from the Onin War of 1467 to the final consolidation of Tokugawa power in the early 1600s. Across 20 episodes, the show traces the arc from civil war to unification, covering the major battles, political alliances, and larger-than-life figures that defined the era. Individual profile episodes spotlight warlords and strategists, while multi-part series tackle pivotal events like the Battle of Sekigahara, Hideyoshi's Korean campaigns, and the Sieges of Osaka that ended the Toyotomi clan. The final episode, covering the fall of Osaka Castle, brought the series to a natural conclusion in 2024. Episodes are concise, typically running 10 to 15 minutes, which makes the show easy to binge in a single afternoon. The hosts keep the narrative tight and focused, avoiding tangents while still providing enough context to understand why each conflict mattered. Rated a perfect 5.0 stars on Apple Podcasts, the podcast has a small but enthusiastic audience. If you are specifically interested in the Sengoku period, perhaps because you have been watching the Shogun television series or playing Total War, this is a focused and well-paced way to get the real history behind the fiction.