Podcast appearances and mentions of John Bentley

A special interview with Dr. Ross Bender, who recently finished his translation of the Shoku Nihongi, including a capstone work on the court of the 8th century.  We cover his work, from his training with some of the greatest names in Japanese historical circles to his dissertation on the Hachiman cult and the Dokyo Incident, and then to his most recent work publishing translations of the various senmyo, the edicts, as well as the entirety of the Shoku Nihongi.  Throughout the discussion we touch on many different  topics, and for notes on everything, please check out our blogpost page:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/bender-interview   Rough Transcript: JOSHUA: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyō's Chronicles of Japan. My name is Joshua, and this is a special episode I'd like to share with you an interview I had with Doctor Ross Bender, translator of the shogunate. Now, some of you may know Doctor Bender from his work translating the Shoku Nihongi, the official history of the Japanese court compiled in 797 and covering from the end of the Nihon Shoki in 697 through the entirety of the Fujiwara capital and Nara periods ending at the 10th year of the reign of Kanmu Tennō in 791. Not only has he translated the historical chronicles, but he has a series of books on the senmyō, the edicts, as well as more about that period, including institutional life more generally. And we cannot forget the paper that started at all, the Hachiman cult and the Dōkyō incident. We'll have links to all of this and more over on the episode blog post page. Now, in this interview, we cover the Shoku Nihongi and Dr. Bender's academic journey. Throughout that journey, he has had the chance to converse and study with some of the big names in Japanese historical circles, such as Donald Keene, Alexander Vovin, G. Cameron "Cappy" Hurst, and more. It was absolutely a pleasure to be able to talk with him about his career, his work, and about the Shoku Nihongi and this period more generally, and I really hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, I give you Sengoku Daimyo's interview of Dr. Ross Bender.    Dr. Bender, thank you very much for joining me for this. Dr. Bender has done some absolutely wonderful work, in particular with translating the Shoku Nihongi, which is going to be very key to some of the stuff we're going to be looking at here in the coming years. I want to thank you, first of all, for all of your efforts and welcome you to Sengoku Daimyo's Podcast, here; our little Chronicles of Japan.    DR. ROSS BENDER: Thank you. Happy to be here.    J: So your translation of the Shoku Nihongi: how did you come about deciding to do that? What was it that pulled you into the translation?    R: Well, it's a long story, but it does go back to my time in graduate school at Columbia in the 70s. In 1974, I finished my Master's thesis, which was "The Hachiman Cult and the Dōkyō Incident". I started grad school in 1971, and after a lot of intensive language training, became interested in Hachiman because, as you know, the common definition was that Hachiman was the Shinto god of war. Of course, at the time, the Vietnam War was raging. And so I became interested in, you know, what was this theology of a war God. And so I became rather obsessed with Hachiman, and, two things: In 74, I was in a seminar with Donald Keene on the Noh theater, and I found a play--a Hachiman play--called "Yumi Yawata". And I translated that and became interested in the way that Hachiman was portrayed in this Noh play. And then at the same time, I became interested in the Dōkyō incident and the Hachiman Oracle. So that was really my first encounter with Shoku Nihongi.    Two things I suppose really struck me. The first was that although the text is in classical Chinese or literary Sinitic, the senmyō and a few of the- there are a few poems are in the old Japanese script inscribed in Shoku Nihongi.    J: And the "senmyō": They are specifically the edicts.    R: They are the imperial edicts that are recorded in old Japanese.   And Motoori Norinaga, in the 18th century did an intensive study and interpretation, really, of them. And he came up with a canonical number of 62. There are some quibbles with that number, but that's the number. And so at the same time, I was discovering that some of the pioneers in the field had done work on these. So, for example, George Sansom in the 1920s had started to translate the senmyō, and he had also done work on the ritsuryo. And then in the 30s, JB Snellen had begun translation of the Shoku Nihongi, and he completed the years 697 to 715. So the reigns of Monmu and Genmei and-    J: I remember actually going through that translation. I think at one point I found it and was so enamored of like, oh, we have some of this, but then it then it stops.   R: Then it stops. And so both Sansom and Snellen are published in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan. And as I say, these were real pioneers, you know, digging into this stuff. And it was amusing because Snellen prefaced his work by saying that Shoku Nihongi is "dry as dust". And he further said that translating it was like "intellectual coolie labor". But his translation, you know, is still very useful and extraordinarily well documented, footnoted. And of course, I was able to use that, although it needed updating.    J: You mentioned that you had language training before going into this.    R: Well, I started at Columbia in fall of 71 with no Japanese at all. I had visited Japan and as a teenager in 67, but no language training. So they gave me an intensive full year of language study. So you had first year, second year, and third year all in the first calendar year. And then in the second year of study you started Bungo and further modern Japanese. And I have to say that I was very fortunate to be at Columbia at a time when some of the giants and pioneers of the field were there. So Ivan Morris had the first class in classical Japanese, and we did bits of Hōjōki and Heike Monogatari. And he told us that when we eventually went to Japan, we might find ourselves at a cocktail party, and we could be sure to amaze the hosts. And so he had us memorize the opening lines of both of those.    J: That's fascinating. So, so all about the Gion bells, and-    R: Yes. "Gion shōja no kane no koe...", and "Yuku kawa no nagare wa..." So I actually- I think there was one time I was at a party with, oddly enough, bunch of pediatricians from Kobe Children's Hospital, and I tried them out and with Hōjōki, and they couldn't get it. They said, oh, is that Hyakunin Isshu?    J: [laughing] R: So I was kind of pleased about that. But then everybody knew the "Heike".    J: Right.    R: Yeah. So actually my first class in ancient Japanese history was with Morris. He tragically died in 1976, so he had the Bungo introduction in the fall. And then Donald Keene came back from Japan and did it in the spring. And so he introduced us to a Noh play and "Oku no Hosomichi" and Shinkokinshu, I think. So the language training was just excellent. And then in the third year, Doctor Hakeda did Shingon Buddhism and classical Chinese and so forth. So yes, there was a lot of front-loading and intensive language study, but it was very pleasurable.   J: As you're studying about Dōkyō and the Dōkyō Incident and Hachiman, that then allowed you to access these sources and the senmyō, and all of that, correct?   R: Right. That was my first introduction to them. Both the "Yumi Yawata" and the "Hachiman and the Dōkyō Incident" were published in the late 70s in Monumenta Nipponica, and then in 1980, I finished my dissertation, which was the political meaning of the Hachiman cult in ancient and early medieval Japan.    J: I came across that as I was going through Ōjin Tennō's period. R: Yes, it was sort of a simplistic construction, but what I did basically was to posit three stages of the Hachiman cult. The first at Usa, which was the oracular stage, the second at Iwashimizu, which was where the Ōjin Tennō connection developed, and also the Hachiman Daibosatsu connection. And then the third stage, you know, identified with Tsurugaoka in Kamakura, which was the Minamoto- Where the martial aspect--the god of war--really developed.    J: And that is fascinating because, you know, you go to Hachiman shrines today and that's probably where people's minds will first go. But it is such a fascinating religious exercise of like Shinto, but also kind of Buddhist and kind of continental.    R: Yes. And I don't know what the statistics are today, but at least I think 35 or 40% of Shinto shrines have some connection with Hachiman. So it's yeah, it's a fascinating study all by itself.   J: So as you were doing this, you come across the Shoku Nihongi. Can you talk a little bit about where the Shoku Nihongi falls in all of this?    R: Yes. Well, the notable thing about both Nihongi and Kojiki is that they begin with the Age of the Gods, so that the first sections, the Shinwa, are the mythologies. Nihongi probably becomes historically accurate sometime in the late, I don't know, it's late six hundreds, but for the seven hundreds it's probably pretty much historically accurate. And of course, you know that John Bentley just recently did the first English translation since I think 1898 was going to ask, so that was long overdue. And that's a very useful publication. J: It's interesting to see the differences in some of the things he updates and the different take he has on it in terms of how to do some of the translating.    R: Yes. And he is a historical linguist. And so he has a very valuable exegesis and commentary. And then, of course, Matthieu Felt just published the first volume of his translation. It was Oxford Press. That just came out a few months ago. That's also a useful document. He actually has the text of the Nihon Shoki along with the translation. And so that's very useful. And I'm not sure when he's going to be publishing the second half, but that's something to watch for.    So the first one started with The Age of the gods. Now, Shoku Nihongi is the second of the Rikkokushi, or 'Six National Histories', and it, unlike the first two, is judged to be a very accurate historical chronicle. And it, of course, was presented to the Court of Kanmu in two recensions, 794 and 797, and takes the story up to 791, which I think was the 10th year of Kanmu's reign. That's where it fits. And then, of course, you have the rest of the Rikkokushi. The next one is Nihon Kōki, which I'm just starting to get into now. Then Shoku Nihon Kōki, Nihon Montoku Tennō Jitsuroku, and then Nihon Sandai Jitsuroku. So they take the story up to 887, and they become increasingly detailed, and the language becomes more intricate as time goes on. But that's where Shoku Nihongi sits in terms of the six national histories, and they're all court chronicles, compiled by court scholars and ordered by the emperors. And of course, the point of view is that of the central court.    J: Right. You're not getting Kyūshū's take on things.    R: No. Although, you know, Kyūshū is a fascinating place. A lot happens there. So of course you have the Dazaifu, the Kyūshū government headquarters, which is an important outpost, almost a mini capital by itself. J: The first several dazai sōchi, I think, all become Daijin. Like Sadaijin, Udaijin. They kind of come back and do that if they don't pass away in the meantime.    R: Yeah, it's an important post. People take that position and come back. But also what's interesting is that the Hayato people of southern Kyūshū begin to appear in the chronicles, and in the early years, there are some major Hayato rebellions, and that's a story all by itself. Those rebellions are, for the most part, put down. And then there's some sort of accommodation because Hayato people show up at court almost as envoys from, you know, the barbarian realm, and then some of them become guards. So they are assimilated more or less early on. And then, of course, there's the whole question of the Hayato and the Emishi and where did they come from? There are some theories that when the Yayoi people came in they mixed with the Jōmon people and assimilated. But some theories that the Hayato in the far southwest and the Emishi in the northeast were remnants of the old Jōmon. So that's, you know, it's a possibility, but it's certainly interesting. And unlike the Hayato, the Emishi, as you know, were constant problem for the Nara court. And all through Shoku Nihongi, but particularly from about oh 780 on, there were more and more intense periods of warfare. And these are described in great detail in Shoku Nihongi. Karl Friday and Wayne Farris back in the 90s, both did books on. I think Farris was the "Heavenly Warriors: History of the Samurai". And then Karl Friday also did a book on the samurai, but they paid a lot of attention to these Emishi wars, so that's well documented in English. J: Getting back to the Shoku Nihongi, which includes all of this, really, what were some of the biggest challenges you found?    R: Well, part of the story is that after I finished my dissertation, I went off and did a variety of things, this and that, and finally wound up at University of Pennsylvania teaching in the English Language Programs, which was the program to teach English to foreign students. At that time the majority of the students when I started were from Japan. So I actually ran a program for the Monbushō, and they would send over Japanese high school teachers of English for a summer session, and we would give them language classes, but also pedagogical training, how to teach English. And so that was my connection with Japan during that period. And so I really was away from my original interest until the early 2000s. I took early retirement and I visited my old advisor, Paul Varley. He had, of course, taught at Columbia, but then he had retired and moved to University of Hawaii. I visited him, he introduced me to Wayne Farris, who was also there at the time, and they both encouraged me to get back, get back to work. So that was sort of the impetus. I have to give them credit for that. So I found myself in Kobe for several months in 2006, and that was when I decided I was interested in the senmyō. So my first thought, my first ambition was to translate the senmyō. As you know, in the late 80s and 90s, the immense five volume Iwanami collated and critical edition had come out, the one edited by Aoki Kazuo and his team. That was still a magnificent piece of work, you know, with I'm sure you've seen it with all of the head notes and footnotes, and on one page there's the kanbun and on on the facing page is the yomi-kudashi, and, you know, more than you could ever hope to know. But also at that time there were three modern Japanese translations, so that was very useful. It was a good time to be starting into this, so I went to a secondhand bookstore in Kobe and got myself the books, and that started, I guess, what's turned out to be a 20 year project.    J: 2006 to 2026.   R: Right.    J: And it looks like you're doing most of this through self-publishing. Is that correct?    R: Yes. I discovered early on that what's now called Kindle Direct--it used to be called Create Space--through Amazon was a very useful piece of software. In fact, I first published several volumes of poetry in 2012, and that was my introduction to using this platform. And I've been very pleased with it, because I don't have to wait years and years to try to find an academic publisher. And actually they pay royalties through Amazon, so... J: That's not bad.    R: Yeah, that's worked out well for me. So I never had a chance to have an academic position teaching Japanese studies. Although when I was at Penn, my friend Cappy Hurst--Cameron Hurst--was the chairman of the department and he had been a student also of Varley's at Columbia, although before my time. And he invited me to give some lectures in his class on Japanese history. So another thing was that my classical Chinese needed an upgrade. Fortunately, at Penn, Victor Mair was teaching a year long course in classical Chinese, and so I sat through that and he was extremely, extremely helpful. Then one other thing was that I also got to know Alexander Vovin, who at the time was at Hawaii, and he, of course, is *the*- was *the* authority on old Japanese. And, you know, his Man'yōshu translations and, and commentary are just really helpful. So he gave me some good advice. So I had good teachers all the way through. And, you know, I'm always very grateful for that.    J: You mentioned classical Chinese. I'm curious how much of it is a standard classical Chinese, or is it kind of their own thing in the archipelago? I'm curious what the language is like in the Shoku Nihongi.    R: Okay, so of course, at that time, the eighth century was sort of the apogee of the Tang dynasty, and at least from what Victor Mair told me. And he was very helpful in beginning this translation. And he would look at some of my stuff. And according to him, it was pretty much like the Tang dynasty Chinese. I think that's called Early- I forget- Early Middle Chinese. So at least for the eighth century, that seemed to be the case. And, you know, you have records in the Shoku Nihongi of teachers who come from the mainland and lecture and teach the correct pronunciation and how to read. And then, of course, with the Buddhist monks, they're using the Chinese translations of some of the Sanskrit, and they have their own techniques for reading. So, yeah, the eighth century is a really dynamic time because the Japanese, at least at the elite level, are and with the help of the Koreans and that should be emphasized after the fall of Paekche there were a large number of refugees and high ranking aristocrats who came to Japan and helped them to learn to read and write Chinese. And then, of course, the Japanese started sending students to China and, you know, staying there for ten, twenty years. So, yeah, it was a very dynamic time. And then, of course, they were learning how to use Chinese characters to express old Japanese. And that's another story in itself, using the characters as semantograms, but also as phonograms. That's one of the things I found really fascinating about old Japanese, about the senmyō. J: And how does that compare to- I think we usually just refer to "Man'yōgana" as any of that. Is it very similar to what's going on in the Man'yōshu, or is once again, is there something else going on with the senmyō?    R: The standard edition of the senmyō I think notes that there are about 250 some--if I've got the number right--of phonograms used in the senmyō. There is a huge number used in the Man'yōshu; much greater. In fact, I think Vovin once said that it's not really known that you can't count. Although Bentley has a very excellent book, I think it's called an ABC Dictionary of Phonograms, like that. He has really scoured the landscape. So- But you could say that the phonograms in the senmyō are Man'yōgana, but that the set of Man'yōgana is far, far greater. J: Only 250 phonograms to have to worry about, as opposed to going through the Man'yōshu and seeing every once in a while a character and going, which pronunciation or what are they trying to represent here?    R: Yeah, yeah. So I mean, Man'yō studies, you know, or a whole realm in themselves and some of the, the emperors--I'm thinking of Genmei especially, or is it Gensho? I think it's Gensho. She has three poems in the Shoku NIhongi and they may be included in Man'yōshu. So there's some crossover. I was going to say that, of course, once you start reading these phonograms, you begin to see where the kana systems developed from, from Man'yōgana.    J: Right. So I think I've read that in Old Japonic, we think that there were more or at least different sounds than maybe we have today. R: Yes.    J: And so you see it represented in different ways. You'll see the same--what we would think of as the same character--represented differently, because to them it was different.    R: Yes. So there's still, as far as I know, no absolute standard for representing old Japanese. You'll see different scholars have their own takes on it, and Vovin, in his Man'yōshu translations, has his own very intricate system. Another good place to look that's freely available. The Oxford, I think it's called the Oxford Ninjal Corpus of Old Japanese Texts, is an ongoing project. It's actually been ongoing for many years, but you can go there. They have laid out all of the Man'yōshu poems with their  romanization system. I suspect that, you know, that's very prestigious and will eventually become a standard. But that's where you find all these things. Like is it "Himiko" or "Pimiko"?    J: Do you say "Kapa", "Kaha", or "Kawa"?    R: Yes. There you go.   J: [Laughter]    R: Right. Yeah.    J: I'm constantly wondering that myself.    R: Yeah. So you'll see different scholars have different ways of approaching it. But my opinion is that the Oxford, which is a very long standing and slow running project, will probably produce the standard.   J: In doing this translation, were there any favorite moments or items of particular interest that you found? R: So yes, actually my first go at the senmyō were the edicts of the lady we call Koken/Shotoku. Actually, I think almost half of the senmyō were produced during her reign. And so that was where I started. I think the first article I got around to writing in 2009 was for the journal Oral Tradition, and it was called Performative Loci of the Shoku Nihoingi Edict 749 to 770. And also because of my interest in Dōkyō my interest in her went way back. So 2015 I did the edicts. I called it the Edicts of the Last Empress, and it was a translation of all of the edicts from her reign. That year and the next year I did the four volumes I called them, Nara Japan 749 to 757, 758 to 763. So that period was, yeah, my first period of interest. And of course it went back to the Hachiman cult and the Dōkyō incident. I mean, you know, the stories about this wild empress I saw I saw an article that's just come out. I think it's a compilation of Women in Japanese Buddhism. And the title of the article by Emily Simpson is "The Depraved Empress". So that was one of the things that, early on, I decided was not accurate. That's a whole rabbit hole by itself. But according to Shoku Nihongi, there's no evidence, you know, of any illicit goings on between the two. But in Nihon Ryoiki, which appears in the early Heian period, not much later, you find the first really scurrilous story that about Dōkyō and the Empress. And then, as if you look at, for example, Donald Keene's "Seeds in the Heart," he has a long excerpt from a medieval tale. I forget which one that, you know, really rings the changes. And what fascinated me was that in there was a Playboy fable- I forget they were called. Some sort of fabulous stories. This one was done anonymously, but it was a very scurrilous, licentious story about Dōkyō and the Empress, and done anonymously. But it was later found to have been Bill LaFleur--William LaFleur--who taught at Penn and passed away unfortunately, some years ago.    J: So then in the Shoku Nihongi, it's just straight up politics, right? Just about Dōkyō's rise. And then it's just the political conflict going on rather than anything else?   R: Right. And it's a very intense period of political- So of course, the story was that when she was at the Hora capital, which was up near Otsu, it was a brief capital, and she was there and she was ill, and Dōkyō apparently at that time attended her as a physician. And that was the beginning of their relationship. So this would have been 760 or so. But the only phrase is that Dōkyō received the favor of the Empress, but it doesn't have a sexual connotation. It's used in other political settings also.    J: Yeah, I have to wonder how much they weren't looking back at Wu in the Chinese, which of course she also gets excoriated for stuff that is questionable. How much worse was it than anything that any of the men did? But she was a woman doing it.   R: Yes. Well, that's what happens to female rulers. You know, you have Catherine the Great in Russia. So. Yes. So that was initially my what really excited me. It was that period. And then I finished the "Edicts" translation. This was 2012. Bryan Lowe, who's a good friend at Princeton, he was finishing his doctorate and he had a workshop on Shosoin documents, and he invited Dr. Sakaehara Towao to present at the workshop. And he had been Bryan's advisor in Japan. So I was able to meet him and then talk to him and said, you know, I think I'd like to translate Shoku Nihongi. And he basically said, go for it. But I met him later that fall in Nara. He was at the Todaiji Museum, and so he encouraged me. A lot of people gave encouragement along the way. Yeah. So 20 years later, actually, I finished the translation 2025. And then this year in the spring, I did what I- is sort of considered the capstone, the volume: "The Japanese Imperial Institution in the Eighth Century." That's available as an e-book and also paperback and hardcover. And so there I have about a 75 page overview of the eighth century and then the introductions, not the translations, but the introductions to each of the emperors throughout the period. I'm very happy with that. And that sort of puts a cap on it. I should mention that that was in memory of Herschel Webb, another one of my great teachers at Columbia. He had done a book way back in 68 called "The Japanese Imperial Institution in the Tokugawa Era". And so this is sort of an homage to his memory.   J: And we very much thank you for it.  I remember when that came out, and we definitely snapped it up as soon as we saw it.    R: Well, great.    J: [Laughter]   R: Yeah. And you know, it's all available on Amazon. So let me let me make my plug.    J: Absolutely. Absolutely. You mentioned something about the Nihon Kōki. Are you are you serious about taking this project on and moving forward, or is that just kind of something you're toying with? R: Well, no, I'm actually I've actually made a start. That's an immense document. And what I'm interested in is finishing the reign of Emperor Kanmu. He dies in 806. And so Nihon Kōki begins in 792, and I'm currently up to 799. But I'm not putting as much energy into it. I do maybe an hour a day if I feel like it, but it's slow going. But there's some really fascinating stuff. So Wake no Kiyomaro died in 799, and they've inserted this immensely long biography of his life at this point, although it was obviously produced later and it's set apart. But that has details of his miraculous trip to the Usa shrine. And, you know, it's not clear if somebody cut his tendons, but he was lame and so he was on his way to Kyūshū, and suddenly a pack of wild boars appeared and sort of escorted him down to the shrine. It is just a really wonderful story. Then he has a vision of Hachiman, which is not part of the Shoku Nihongi tale. Yeah, I'm trucking along. My ambition is at least to finish the reign of Emperor Kanmu, and then we'll see what time there is beyond that.    J: So do you have any recommendations for current students of Japanese history? Those coming up? R: Actually, there are some young scholars. I was at the Association for Asian Studies meeting in Columbus, Ohio, which was, I guess, yeah, 2025. And for some reason there were a good number of presentations on eighth and ninth century. So there's a scholar by the name of Nadia Kanagawa. She finished a dissertation at USC on immigrants in the eighth century. Then Abigail McBain finished up at Columbia, and her dissertation was on specifically Tang Buddhist monks and interchange with Japan. Yeah, so there are some young scholars who are digging in to this. You know, I was just looking the other day at Wikipedia, which is a good start for anyone. I would say, you know, take it with a grain of salt. But if you want to know the names of the, you know, the famous emperors and the rebels, you know, Tachibana no Naramaro, and Fujiwara no Nakamaro. And just, just the other day I found this amazing thing called 'Grokipedia', which apparently is a new. But it's one of those AI things. Yeah, but it had the best summary of the Shoku Nihongi that I've seen. So with the AI revolution, goodness knows what's going to happen. But yeah, I find that it's possible to dip in and a lot of things are available. For example, the Rikkokushi text is online, it's been online, and it was first published by Asahi Shimbun way back when. But I used that and then that the Oxford project that I mentioned is online -- more and more it's becoming possible to access, you know, original documents. J: Yeah, combination of making them available online, better online translations.    R: Machine translation is going great guns. Yeah-   J: Yeah. Although I have to admit, it can get you a sense of what the classical Chinese is kind of saying sometimes, but the translation for some of the old stuff just it still has some work to do. I think it's better if you can translate the at least the modern Japanese translation, rather than sometimes going back into this. It's still tricky.    R: Yeah, well, it's I admit I'm getting old, but this this stuff is getting kind of frightening. This machine translation...   J: It is, yeah.    R: I feel like I'd be out of the job if I had a job.    J: Well, I think there's still a lot of questions to be asked on that. I don't think we need to get into a whole thing on AI right now, but I think there's some great benefits, obviously. And then, you know, I definitely know there's some concerns too, because every once in a while it can just hallucinate an answer. And you might be going through things that seem absolutely wonderful and then find something that you're like, wait a minute, I never knew that. [laughter]     R: And then it turns out not to be true.    J: Yeah, I don't know if you heard there was one, and I mean, this was a year ago, which already seems, in AI terms, ages and ages, but apparently it hallucinated entire papers and authors.    R: Yes, that's there was I don't know if you follow the PMJS list.    J: Oh yeah.    R: But I think there was a discussion and an example of that. So it's-  J. But the world is going to be different. J: Things are changing. And I think we will figure out how to use the tools that are useful will hopefully win out. And there's always going to be certain things. For instance, I remember early days, Wikipedia and still, you know, looking at Wikipedia sometimes for certain things around more popular subjects got to be a little more wary, though I have found the Japanese Wikipedia has been great when you're just trying to look for something and go, let me at least get what a common sense of this is so that I know the other things to go research. R: Well, I was going to say, just to sort of sum up, yeah, we're in a very dynamic time, but the eighth century was very similar because the new technologies were pouring in from the continent and the peninsula, and people were learning these new methods of reading and writing and orality to literacy.    J: So any last thoughts? I do appreciate all your time. But any last thoughts as we finish up here?    R: Not really, but I noticed that yesterday you came up with a long spiel on the UNESCO World Heritage site, and that's exciting. The Asuka region you seem to have links to photographs that took me back to wandering around that area. The Ishibutai, I remember, was something. So party on and keep up the good work. J: Thank you very much and thank you again. Thank you for your time today, and thank you for all the work that you've put into this. You have made these sources so much more accessible for people in English, and I think that is going to be critical as we move forward. I know for me this is a huge help. I was looking at Shoku Nihongi going, okay, I know we've got like the first so many years so I can get through that and then I'm really going to have to up my game. Then I saw all the work that you'd been doing and it was like a big load felt lifted off of my back. Now I can, you know, take a look. But at least with the idea that someone more experience than I has already done some of the really hard labor. I really want to say thank you for all of that.    R: Yeah, you're very welcome.    J: And once again, I would like to say thank you to Doctor Bender and thank all of you for listening. If you think that this is something you would like to see more of, please let us know. We'll see what we can do. Perhaps we can make it the start of a new interview series. In the meantime, next episodes we get back to our regularly scheduled program. And as always, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts. If you feel the need to do more and want to help us keep this thing going, we do have information about how you can donate on Patreon, where we have early and add free episodes for you to listen to. You can also donate through our Ko-Fi or BuyMeACoffee Sites. Just look up SengokuDaimyo for all of that. You can also find the links over to our main website, SengokuDaimyo.com, where we will also have more discussion on topics from this episode. Finally, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page. You can also email us at the.Sengoku.Daimyo@gmail.com. Thank you also to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now. Thank you again and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan

For the first regular episode of the year (excepting our New Year's recap) we take a look at the New Year Traditions at Temmu's court.  How did the court celebrate the New Year in the late 7th century? For more, check out our blogpost:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-141 Rough Transcript: Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua and this is episode 141: Temmu's New Year's Traditions   The chill winter air meant that most of the assembled crowd had donned multiple layers of robes.  Men and women had assembled together, upon the open, rock-covered courtyard, both to see and be seen.  To the north and east of the courtyard were the walls and gates of the buildings that made up the royal palace, the rooves of the buildings just visible beyond the gates. The onlookers stood arrayed around the open lanes that had been created for the event—at one end of the rocky field were targets, while at the other were archers, also arrayed in their finest outfits.  While technically they wore hunting robes, cut to allow greater movement in the arm, many of these fabrics had no business being anywhere near a moor or the dirt of open fields.  After all, this wasn't just some hunt:  They were demonstrating their skills in the center of the State.  At the officials' command, the archers let loose their arrows.  The crowd murmured at the soft crack of the bowstring, the faint whisper of arrow as the fletchings cut through the air, and the thud as the arrows struck their targets.  Looking downrange, approval bubbled through the crowd: the targets were well-struck.  Behind the archers on the field, another group awaited their turn. The events of the day would be the talk of the court, from the lowest clerk to the highest prince , for days to come.   Not just the well-placed shot, but also the grace and poise of the one who had let loose an arrow of particular note.  And heaven forbid an arrow miss its target.  Even kicking up stones or scraping the earth could have negative social consequences.  A particularly good showing could inspire poetry, and beyond the prizes being offered to the winner, could also bring notice to those from more obscure backgrounds. The new year had just started, and a good performance might be just what was needed to help put the rest of the year on a good footing.     Welcome back!  This is the first episode of the new year, 2026, and we are still going through the reign of Ohoama, aka Temmu Tenno, covering the period from 672 to 686. Before we get started, though, a quick shout out to Suzuki for supporting us on Patreon.  It means a lot and helps us keep this thing going.  If you would like to support us or our efforts to maintain the website, where we also have the Armor manual, clothing, and a miscellany on various topics, we have information at Sengokudaimyo.com and we will have more information at the end of this and every episode.  Support is appreciated as I really do want to try and minimize ads—I don't put any into the podcast myself, though some platforms may place ads around the podcast, which I cannot always control.  Now we've covered a lot this reign, but this episode we are going to cover three things in particular.  First off, and perhaps a bit of a tangent, we'll talk about some of the issues with the Chronicles when it comes to reading it,especially in translation.  It seems quite clear to me that even the sources that the Chroniclers were using weren't always in agreement with each other on how they spelled certain things or even in properly recording when things happened. After that we'll cover the major topics of this episode, focusing primarily on the New Year traditions of the court—we'll look at the major events of the first month for each year in the reign, allowing us to see some of the similarities, and differences. Finally, we'll look at the last year of Ohoama's reign, particularly as he grew ill, because it can be a fascinating question:  What did people do when disease struck before we had modern medicine?  Here the Chronicles reveal a lot about not only the beliefs of the time, but of their syncretism: how people were willing to reach out to whatever power they could in order to cure disease.  Whether it was Yin-yang divination, beseeching the local kami, or attempting to make merit, all of these things were on the table when it came to illness and mortality. And so, let's get into it. One of the first things I want to talk about is the problem that we have in trying to read the Chronicles, both in the way they are written and then the translation issue on top of that.  Even in Japanese the Chronicles have to be translated out of an ancient form of kanbun—basically a Japanese version of Chinese, using Sinitic characters.  Like any document written by non-native speakers, the Chronicles have their idiosyncrasies that make it different from what someone in Chang'an might be writing at the same time.  There are times and places where it is clear that something is meant to be read in the Japanese pronunciation, which itself was different from modern Japanese.  Add to this the fact that there are many times that different Sinitic characters sound alike in Japanese—especially in modern Japanese.  So any English translation of the Chronicles which doesn't give the actual characters in the source text can add to the confusion.  This is why I like to consult either the Japanese Historical Text Initiative or an electronic version of the National History series text—though even those have issues at times when the characters used in the text don't exist in modern character sets, though that seems to be less and less of a problem. One example I want to give of the complexities of reading the Chronicles, and the need to dive deeper into the original language and consult multiple versions, is a set of records for Ki no Omi no Abemaro and others.  He is our first mention of a member of the Ki family: on the 9th day of the 8th month of 673, the first year since Ohoama's ascension and one year after the Jinshin no Ran, we are told that Ki no Omi no Abemaro and others were given favors and rewards for their service during the war in Iga province.  Indeed, Ki no Omi no Abemaro is listed prominently in the records of the Jinshin no Ran and appears to have been one of the generals for Ohoama and the Yoshino faction in general.  Less than a year later, on the 28th day of the 2nd month, Ki no Omi no Abemaro died and was posthumously awarded the rank of Daishi, which was 5th from the top in the old system of 26 ranks.  A rather respectable rank, to be sure. Later that same year we get a note that Ki no Omi no KATAmaro—another member of the family, apparently--was appointed, along with a "Prince Mino" as a commissioner for the erection of the Great Temple of Takechi. Two years later, however, we get a record on the 22nd day of the 4th month of 676 that the sovereign, Ohoama, sent an order to the Governor of Mino telling him to let the children of Ki no Omi no Abemaro, resident in the district of Toki, be removed to the East country and become peasants in that country.  On the face of it, this appears to be an incredible fall from grace.  Ki no Omi no Abemaro is basically one of the top generals and heroes of the Jinshin no Ran, but his children are so unruly that they are banished to the East and stripped of their noble status?  There has to be a story there, right? Then in 679, on the 3rd day of the 2nd month, we are told that Ki no Omi no Katamaro died.  For his service in the Jinshin War he received the posthumous rank of Upper Daikin.  That would have been roughly the 7th rank—two below Ki no Abemaro.  So was the Ki family back in the good graces of the court?  What is going on? First off, when we go to the original text, we see that Aston, whose translation of the Nihon Shoki we've been working on Ihas made an apparent error in translation.  Remember, Aston was translating the Chronicles back in 1896, without the aid of modern computers, along with a lot of other research that has happened since then, and I can hardly fault him for missing things here and there.  This is why, if you cannot check the original, you may want to also look at the new translation from John Bentley.  Here we can see that he translates the name not as "Ki no Omi no Abemaro", but rather that of "Ki no Omi no KASAmaro".  And if we compare Ki no Omi no KaSAmaro with the previous entry on Ki no Omi no KaTAmaro we can see that these are actually the exact same names except for a single character.  Which leads us to the question:  Are these the same person, and the scribes simply miswrote one of the characters in the name?  It may not even be on the Chroniclers so much as whatever texts they were, themselves, working on.  This isn't helped by the fact that we later on see another entry for Ki no KATAmaro, but that one uses character for "KATA", meaning "hard", using the kun'yomi, or Japanese reading, rather than using two phonetic characters in the on'yomi reading.  So is this just another way to write "KATAmaro" or is this a different person altogether? Ultimately, we cannot be entirely sure.  It does seem wild that there would be two "Ki no Omi no Katamaro" at court at the same time and nobody otherwise distinguished the two.  The question about KaSAmaro and KaTAmaro, and whose kids were sent into exile, is a bit harder to untangle. And, truth be told, it is ultimately a minor point.  We have only a couple of lines here, and maybe these passages will help illuminate something later in the histories, but for now, they are just fragments of the story of what was happening.  Parts of the tattered tapestry from which the royal history was ripped out and restitched together, the rest of the story largely discarded, unless it made its way to us through other means. The Chronicles may be flawed, but they are still our main source for the period, and while we might challenge individual items, we still get a glimpse at how things operated back at this time.  For instance, if we look at the events happening around the New Year, we can see some common threads. The New Year is an important tradition in many cultures.  Whether it was a solar or lunar cycle—or some combination—the new year indicated a new cycle, and was often accompanied by associated symbols and rituals.  Today in the US it is often celebrated with fireworks and champagne, followed by making resolutions for the new year.  In Japan, people will often go to their local shrine or temple for an important first visit, and temple bells will ring out 108 times. Another tradition is the osechi-ryori, the  traditional new years foods.  This has grown over time from a tradition of eating a large bowl of rice to various other foods that are seen as auspicious or having special properties, such as the hardening of teeth—a major concern before the era of modern dental hygiene!  Then there are traditions such as the Kagami Biraki, or opening of the mirror, and the creation of special mochi, or rice cakes for the purpose.  Of course all of these traditions started somewhere and have evolved over time, so what do we know about the New Year celebrations during the late 7th century? One caveat: in the Chronicles, we only really see what was happening in the court, and the Yamato court at that.  There may have been local traditions that others were following that, unless we find documentation about them, we likely would never know.  But many of the court traditions were passed down to later generations. These traditions appear to include the giving of gifts; large, celebratory banquets; and the annual archery tournament. Banquets are some of the first and most common things we see.  We see a banquet as Ohoama assumed the throne in 673—which probably was the event that overshadowed anything else they might have done that year.  The following year, 674, there doesn't seem to have been much recorded, and I wonder if they were still pulling everything together after the turmoil of Ohoama's ascension.  And so it is that in the first month of 675 we really get to see the annual new year's events in their full form.  On the second day of that year, from the Royal Princes on down, all of the public functionaries presented their respects to the sovereign.  I suspect that this was a large ceremony, where everyone gathered in the courtyard of the palace together or something similar, not that each person individually went up and presented their respects—I doubt Ohoama would have wanted to sit through all of that.  Also, as we've already seen, there were limits on what parts of the palace different functionaries were allowed to enter.  So some of these well-wishers may have been "outside", others in the courtyard, and others in the palace building itself, depending on their rank and importance in the bureaucratic hierarchy. On the following day, all public functionaries, from the initial rank upwards, presented firewood.  Aston notes that this is the first mention of what would become a yearly practice.  Firewood may not seem like much, but it would have likely been important to keeping things running, especially given how early people were supposed to arrive at the palace and administrative complex each day.  This wasn't firewood for a fireplace—they didn't have those—but probably would have been used either for cooking or, I suspect, for the large braziers that burned with wood and pitch to light the darkness, particularly in the winter months.  Firewood could also be processed into smaller pieces of coal for other uses.  It is interesting that for the first ceremony, the Chronicles describe the court from the Royal Princes on down, while for the giving of firewood the order is from the initial—which is to say the lowest—ranks upwards.  This could indicate the order in which things progressed in these cases. Several days after that, on the 7th day of the first month, a banquet was given at court for the Ministers—so only the higher ranking functionaries.  But ten days later, on the 17th, everyone of rank—the Ministers of State; the Daibu, or high officials; and all of the public functionaries from the initial rank upwards had an archery meeting in the Court of the Western Gate. Archery and archery contests had been important to the Yamato people for ages—and the same on the continent.  Confucius, in his day, suggested that archery was a martial skill that even nobles should cultivate.  I believe we've noted before how archery could be used both for warfare and for just feeding your family.  As such, it was considered a particularly useful skill for just about everyone to have.  It probably also helped that it was a martial skill that noblemen and others could use to show off without actually risking any injury to themselves in the process.  I'm just saying.  And as we described at the top of the episode, this particular archery contest would, for both participants and spectators, likely have been a chance to show off the top of their game, whether in martial prowess, clothing, or behavior. And since we are looking at the new year's celebrations, let's keep this going and look at later years in Ohoama's reign. As I go through these you'll start to see the patterns, where the events I've just described will generally recur year after year, but not identically, sometimes with a shuffle in the schedule. In 676, we see that the Ministers and public functionaries pay their respects on the first day of the new year.  On the 4th day, the sovereign granted gifts to the higher level officials, from Royal Prince Takechi, down to the high officials, or Daibu, of Shoukin rank.  Their not so secret Santa gifts included robes, hakama, lined garments, obi for their waist, leg straps, and staves, or walking sticks.  We are also told that everyone above the rank of Shoukin also got an armrest thrown in, as well.  Further gifts or grants were given out several days later, on the 7th, to everyone from Shoukin on up, based on their individual circumstances.  Then, on the 15th, we again see all of the functionaries present firewood and then they were all entertained at a court banquet. The following day they held the annual new year's archery contest, with prizes, at the court of the western gate.  Those who hit the target received prizes of different values.  In his recent translation of the Nihon Shoki, Bentley references Kuroita on Article 41 of Miscellaneous Statutes, saying that this archery event was apparently a regular new year's occurrence, and even the prizes were noted as varying over time. The same day they held the archery contest, that year, Ohoama held a banquet at the Shima Palace.  Shima was the name given to the Soga Prime Minister, back in the day, so I assume that this was at or near the site of the old Soga residence? In 677, by comparison, we don't see nearly as much referenced.  There is archery at the South Gate, vice the west gate, but that is it.  The festivities in 678 similarly only talk about the archery at the south gate.  There is also mention of a preparation for worshipping the kami of heaven and earth, for which a purification was held throughout the state.  In addition, an abstinence palace, or saiguu, was erected on the bank of the Kurahashi river.  Kurahashi appears to refer to a tributary of the Ohara river, in Sakurai.  This feels less like a New Year's celebration, however, and more like a sign of merit-making.  The Saiguu would have likely been to prepare for a trip to Ise shrine, and three months later Ohoama was preparing to go to the Saiguu, but that is when Princess Towochi suddenly died, and they scuttled the plans. In 679, the court greeted the New Year with a new decree.  Ohoama declared that Princes, Ministers, and public functionaries—anyone in service to the government, basically, were to refrain from paying respects during New Years or other ceremonies to anyone except relatives of the grade of elder brother, elder sister, and above, or to the senior members of the Houses.  Princes weren't even to pay respects to their own mothers unless they were, themselves, princesses.  Ministers were likewise not to pay respects to their mothers if they were of "mean" rank.  In other words, if they were commoners. These kinds of statutes are interesting.  First of all, you ask yourself why?  In all likelihood, there were various local traditions and individuals paid respects to their parents as well as to others to whom they owed respect for one reason or another.  Here the State is ordering society such that there is a clear hierarchy, at least among the members of the court.   Since women often found advancement by marrying up, it was usual for one's mother to have been born a lower rank in society than oneself.  And so we see them enforcing the social order. That new order was based on Confucian concepts of hierarchy, and this seems to go along with those same ideas. What we don't really see is how this was enforced—if at all.  The day after that, the yearly archery competition took place at the West Gate of the palace. The next year, 680, we see a New Year's Banquet at the Court of the Great Hall.  Ohoama himself occupied the Mukai-kodono, which appears to refer to one of the smaller wings.  Based on the palace layout that we see in the posthole remains, this probably means that he was set up in the smaller wing, likely in a more intimate space, while most of the other guests were in the large hall, maintaining that crucial separation of sovereign and subjects. This New Year's archery event included Princes of the Blood all the way down to the rank of Shouken—the very lowest rank in the court—and it was held at the South Gate. You may be noticing a pattern, that the archery competition is listed as being held at either the south or west gates.  The south gate probably refers to the main gate of the later Okamoto—aka the Kiyomihara—palace.  The West gate refers to the west gate of the Ebinoko enclosure.   We talked about these and the general layout of the palace back in Episode 134, and you can check out that podcast blog post for some images of what things looked like, as well.  These gates were on the north and east sides of a large, rectangular courtyard, which was likely the actual event location.  So it isn't as if these were separate areas, just a difference of where things were set up in what was otherwise the same relative space. The following year, 681, we see similar ceremonies.  We see offerings made to the kami of Heaven and Earth, and we once again see a note about various functionaries paying their respects at court.  Even though this wasn't mentioned every year, it could have been an annual thing and just wasn't always recorded so the Chroniclers just wrote down what they had records for.  There are certainly other things we don't necessarily witness in the records, such as the annual promotions and promulgations.  We see irregular promotions, of course, such as on someone's passing, but the regular administration of the government and promotions of people to new positions is not something we really see regularly documented, since it doesn't really shed much light on the sovereign and the royal household.  And so we sometimes see things if they get mentioned, but otherwise we only see glimpses.  That would change as records became more administrative and the histories were more about simply recording what was happening—though still from a particular angle.  At this point, however, we aren't dealing with a single court record, but rather with numerous records, stories, and recollections.  That same year, 681, we also see another banquet, with Ohoama situated in the Mukai no Kodono, while the Princes of the Blood and non-royal Princes were both introduced into the inner reception chamber.  Ministers attended in the outer reception chamber.  They all received sake and musical performances, and rank advancements were given out.  Kusakabe no Kihi no Ohogata was graduated from the rank of Upper Daisen to Lower Daikin, and given the title of Naniwa no Muraji.  A few days later, Sakahibe no Muraji no Iwazumi was granted a fief with 60 horses and received presents of coarse silk, floss silk, cloth, and one hundred mattocks—the last one being a rather interesting gift, I have to admit.  Of course, in true Chronicles fashion, we have no idea why these gifts were made—we don't even have another reference to Iwazumi around there, but he must have done something. We are later told that there was the annual archery shoot, and then a decree, possibly unrelated to New Years, that the various provinces were ordered to repair the shrines to the kami of heaven and earth. The year 682 is an anomaly.  There is no mention of a banquet, nor of an archery tournament.  I wonder if this may have to do with some of the sad events of that first month.  While it started fine—Toneri no Miyatsuko no Nukamushi was raised from Daisen to Lower Shoukin—we are told that on the 18th, Lady Higami, one of Ohoama's consorts, died in the palace.  The next day there was an earthquake, and she was buried on the 27th.  A prominent illness and death may have put a pall on the ceremonies, and could explain why we don't see any mention of them for that year. It is also possible that some of this New Year tradition had become so routine that people were no longer commenting on it, and therefore the Chroniclers weren't including references to it. The following year, in 683, we again see the functionaries paying their respects.  We also see the presentation of a three legged sparrow by the Viceroy of Tsukushi, Tajihi no Mabito no Shima, along with others.  A three legged sparrow would have been something: it is reminiscent of the three legged crow, often depicted in the sun.  It is unclear if it was still alive, but that wasn't the point.  They invited the Princes of the Blood down to the Ministers to great hall, the Daigokuden, for a banquet, where the three legged sparrow was displayed. .  Later that month, Ohoama issued a decree in regards to all of the auspicious omens and made presents to everyone, from Shouken rank upwards.  There was also a general amnesty—all crimes were pardoned, from capital offenses on down, and all forced labor was remitted, so that people didn't have to provide the normal service.  The phrasing for this particular entry is intriguing.  Ohoama is mentioned as Yamato Neko Sumera no Mikoto and is specifically called a "God Incarnate".  This is one of the rare times that we see the Chronicles explicitly call out the sovereign as a living deity.  Of course, they trace the royal lineage back to Amaterasu, but there isn't a lot suggesting that the sovereign is necessarily a deity. And in reality, this was probably something that was more honorific than anything else.  Heck, at times in Japanese history we would see sovereigns selling their calligraphy to help keep the royal palace funded while warriors went around actually being in charge of things.  However, this divine language did show up in the 19th and 20th century, especially as the Tennou, now called Emperor in English terminology, once again was recognized as the Head of State, and people would actually pray to him.  Not necessarily like praying at a shrine, but out of respect.  And remember, a lot of time the Tennou was kept out of sight of regular people and hidden, much like the way that the kami were treated.  The concept of the Emperor's divinity was very much tied up in the elevation of the State and the general sense of Nationalism that had gripped Japan in the early half of the 20th century.  And so the allies quite explicitly had Emperor Showa renounce his divinity after Japan  World War II. Those studying Japanese history have probably heard of this concept, and so it is interesting to see evidence of it here, as well as the nature of the royal house, where the sovereign is kept at a distance from those of lower rank, unless they are directly serving him.  But it was not as though the sovereign was a god in the sense of being all powerful.  Even if he were considered a living, visible kami, the kami were not omnipotent, and there was no getting over the fact that our particular sovereign, Ohoama, was getting older.  Only a year or so earlier, he had suffered a rather bad illness, so he clearly was not invincible.  And it is of course possible that this language was simply royal exaggeration, rather than any attempt to define the sovereign as something more than he was.  Still, that concept would continue to play a part throughout Japanese history. The same day in 683 that Ohoama issued the pardons, we are told that there was a special performance at the Woharida Court of dance and music from Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—the "Three Countries" of the Korean peninsula, even if only one of them was still going strong.  The Woharida palace is thought to have been north, along the banks of the Asuka River.  It may have been moved over time—there appears to have been a palace in the Furumiya area, near Toyoura, but there is also evidence of a palace by a shared name over by Ikazuchi-no-oka, on the other side of the river.  Excavations at Ikazuchi no oka revealed pottery with the name of the palace, suggesting that this was the site, but even then, that pottery was from the later Tempyo era.  Regardless, it seems that the Asuka valley was just chock full of palaces, new and old, though the older ones were not as regularly used for government functions, one assumes. The following year, 684, we again get told about the annual archery shoot.  It took place in the Eastern court this time, with Ministers in attendance.  Apparently they had men skilled in archery shooting alongside palace attendants and little people—the word used in Japanese is "Shuju" or "Hikihito".  This word is often translated as "dwarf"; it appears to be a derogatory term for anyone considered short of stature, though it is also used to refer more generally to those seen as either lacking wit or to actors and performers. This isn't the first time we see the term.  Back in 675, about 9 years prior, Ohoama had sent orders to a number of regions near the capital, from Awaji to Tamba, to Afumi and to Mino and Wohari, among others, to send as tribute common people who could sing, shuju—or dwarfs—and jugglers.  More generally they seem to be referring to entertainers, and it strikes me that could be what is meant here.  Either way, the entertainment industry was hardly a lucrative one, and we can see that performers are almost more of a commodity, to be "paid" as tribute, rather than a professional who is "hired" to work.  I suspect that, as in many other times and places, individuals who were shorter than average often found work as entertainers in this sense—whether they wished it or not. The year 685 we don't see any mention of archery, though it probably still happened.  Instead the Chronicles focus on the various government officials paying their respects to their sovereign.  The rest of the entries for the month are largely concerned with changes to the rank system as of that year. The year 686, we get the last records of various new years festivals—four months later, the sovereign would grow terribly ill, and he would eventually pass away later that year.  However, for those still celebrating the new year in 686, that was all in the future. The last year of Ohoama's reign started out relatively like others. Ohoama went to the Daigokuden, the Great Hall of Audience, and gave a banquet to the Princes and High Officials.  There he decided to have something of a riddle challenge.  He would ask riddles, and then offer prizes for the correct answer. And no, unfortunately we don't have any of the riddles, at least that I have seen.  Aston calls these "conundrums" and notes that they are specifically nonsensical questions, and provides examples such as "Why does a horse, after a rapid run, listen to the earth? Why does a dog, when he goes slowly, raise his leg?"  Ohoama's son, Prince Takechi, answered correctly, and so did Prince Ise.  Their prizes differed in content, but in both cases were pretty extensive.  The winners received ceremonial robes, brocade or purple hakama, numerous bolts of coarse silk, many pounds of thread, hundreds of pounds of flossed Silk, and hundreds of bolts of cloth. I think that makes it quite a bit more lucrative than any of the quiz nights I've ever been to. Later that month, there was another banquet, this time for nine Buddhist monks of Daikan-daiji. Besides its status as a national temple, this may have also been related to the year before, when Ohoama had fallen ill, and prayers had been offered at Daikandaiji for his recovery.  The courthad likewise provided gifts to the temple in the last month of the previous year, and then, at the banquet, gave to the attending monks silk and cloth, based on their rank. But that wasn't the end of the gifts.  The following day the Princes and High Officials all received upper garments and hakama—likely referring to official garments—each getting one suit, each. Then, on the 13th day of the new year, the court invited 20 exceptional individuals to a banquet.  These were talented people, professors, divination specialists, and physicians.  They were also wined and dined and presented various gifts. On the 16th day, the Princes and High Officials were then invited to a banquet in the Daigokuden.  They were given gifts of silk and cloth, based on their rank.  Then they held another riddle competition, with correct answers rewarded with gifts of coarse and flossed silk. This was only a short time after disaster had struck, though a bit removed—two days earlier, in the evening, the royal storehouse at Naniwa had caught fire, eventually burning the entire Toyosaki palace complex to the ground.  Some claimed that it was actually started at a private residence,  that of Ato no Muraji no Kusuri, and then spread to the Palace.  In the end, only the military storehouse was spared. This would have been quite the tragedy for the government, but it did not halt the festivities happening down in Asuka.  The Naniwa Palace appears to have been a major government center for the administration of the state, but it was not the royal court which had been in Asuka for over a decade.  Indeed, I imagine that the news probably reached Asuka around the time of the Banquet itself. And yet, rather than putting a damper on the festivities, they continued another couple of days – presumably everything was already prepared and there was no point in canceling.  On the 17th, the court sponsored a banquet in the rear palace, presumably for the Queen and members of the imperial family.  Then the following day there was a great revel at the palace.  Ohoama took his place in front of the royal muro and made presents to performers, as well as to the singers.  As before everything varied according to rank. Asuka wasn't the only place to get in on the festivities.  The same month, the court also sponsored a banquet for the Silla envoys in Tsukushi, sending Prince Kawachi and others. Regrettably, that would be the last new year that Ohoama would see.  In the fifth month, he grew ill, and what we see in the Chronicles after that is an interesting look into how people of the time dealt with sickness. First, the court had the Sutra of Yakushi expounded at Kawaradera and held a Buddhist retreat in the palace, inviting monks to come and expound Buddhist teachings.  Yakushi, or Yakushi Nyorai—Bhaisajyaguru in Sanskrit—was known as the Medicine Buddha, and his name in Sinitic characters was basically "Master of Medicine".  It is said that he was responsible for the Eastern Pure Land, and that, as a Bodhisattva, he had made 12 great vows to cure the illnesses of all living beings in the world.  For that reason, Yakushi Nyorai was often called upon to cure illness.  In fact, six years earlier, when the Queen, Uno no Sarara Hime, had taken ill, Ohoama erected an entire temple to Yakushi Nyorai, known as Yakushiji.  He then had 100 people take vows as priests, and they attributed her recovery to this effort. In this case, however, it seems that it didn't have quite such an effect, and Ohoama remained under the weather.  We are also told that the court sent Palace Attendants, the Oho-toneri, to clean the pagodas of various temples and that a general amnesty was announced for all under heaven, emptying the prisons.  All of this points to the idea of making merit in the hope of bringing good karma, and thus healing. But the following month, Ohoama was still ill.  Divination was performed by the Onmyoji, the court diviners, and they claimed that there was a curse from Kusanagi, the sword that is considered one of the three main royal symbols.  This is the sword that was said to have been found by Susanowo in the tale of Yamata no Worochi, and which gained its name, Kusanagi, when used by Yamato Takeru, cutting down the grass to save him when his enemies tried to catch him by setting fire to the field where he was hunting.  For more on that, check out Episodes 34 and 35. Given the importance of Kusanagi, I suspect that the idea of destroying it to remove the curse was out of the question, and so it was sent to Atsuta Shrine, where it was enshrined and would largely stay except when needed for enthronement ceremonies.  And yet, even after the sword was taken away, the illness remained.  Six days later, on the 16th day of the 6th month, the court sent Prince Ise and officials to Asukadera and asked the monks there to make and oath with the Buddha to make Ohoama whole through the power of the Three Treasures of Buddhism.   For their work, the three Buddhist Officers, the Master of the Law, and the Upadhyaya and temple directors, as well as those monks with the rank of "master" each received a donation of one robe and one cover, or "Ohi". Three days later, the court ordered the hundred officials to go to Kawaradera and perfom the ceremony of lighting lanterns and giving offerings to Buddha.  Then they held a great feast and offered repentance for their transgressions.  All of this sounds like a continued attempt to make merit for the state, and thus for Ohoama. We then see the court granting the monks Hounin and Gishou 30 stipend-households to provide for them in their old age, which may be more merit-making, or possibly was related to some of the many other activities so far.  There are a few issues with this entry, and Aston and Bentley don't seem to agree on the actual date.  Bentley has it on the 28th, but that seems odd as it comes before the entry for the 22nd of the same month.  Aston has it as the 20th, but then claimes that there is something odd about the date of the 22nd. On the 22nd, we are simply told that the district kitchen of Nabari caught fire.  Aston notes that this would have been the official government arm in the district gathering food to supply the royal household—rather than being a kitchen in terms of a place to prepare food. Merit-making continued into the 7th month.  We see the Soujou and Soudzu, the primary and secondary prelates of the Asukadera, performing ritual repentance.  The following day there is another general amnesty, and Aston specifically mentions performing a Oho-harai, or cleansing. The day after taxes were halved from the provinces and corvee labor with local conscripted labor was exempted for the year.  Then we see the court presenting paper offerings to the Kunikasu Kami in Ki provinces, as well as the four shrines in Asuka and the Great Suminoe—aka Sumiyoshi—shrine. On the 8th day of the 7th month, 100 monks were invited to the court to read the Golden Light Sutra—Konkoymyou kyou.  And on the 15th there was another court issued amnesty. Despite all of these attempts to make merit and intercede with the Buddha or with various kami, Ohoama's illness continued.  We see that the court issued a decree that all things that should occur, great or small, should be reported to the queen and the crown prince—presumably because Ohoama was no longer in a state to be able to do so. Continuing with their efforts, the court declared that destitute commoners who had been forced to borrow rice seed or money before the 12th month of the previous year would be exempted from repayment.  And then the court changed the name of the year to Akami-tori, or Shuuchou.  They also renamed the palace in Asuka to "Kiyomihara"—again, go check Episode 134 for more on the palace.  "Shuuchou" is the Red Bird, likely referring to Suzaku, though Aston also points out that "Asuka" here is given as "flying bird", as well, and there had been numerous bird-related omens reported throughout the reign. Although these names would not have been used prior to this point—the 7th month of the final year of the reign—the Chroniclers applied the nengo, Shuuchou, to all of the entries for this year, and the name of the palace is often given as "Kiyomihara" is given to distinguish it from the Later Okamoto Palace, even though it was simply the latter palace with the addition of the Ebinoko enclosure. The changing of the era name was likely another attempt to change the seemingly inauspicious year, along with all of the merit-making that the court had been undergoing. And yet they kept going. The court selected 70 people who were diligent in keeping Buddhist laws and had them take the tonsure, and they sponsored a feast—or festival—in the Royal Muro of the Palace. At the same time the various princes had a statue of the Boddhisatva of Compassion, Kannon, made for the sovereign and had the Lotus sutra—the sutra where Kannon is first mentioned—read out at Daikandaiji. Kannon, or Avalokitesvara, was originally seen as a male Boddhisatva, but is often depicted as a woman.  They are also known as Guanyin, from which we get Kannon in Japanese.  Guanyin is also seen as Goddess of Mercy, and is one of the most popular figures across multiple sects of Buddhism and even outside of the Buddhist faith, where she is still seen as a goddess.  In this case, however, it seems clear that the princes were seeking compassion to relieve the sovereign of his affliction. And yet it persisted. They had 80 more people take the tonsure, and then 100 more men and women, placed 100 statues of the Boddhisatva, Kannon, in the palace, and then read out 200 volumes of the Lotus Sutra. And then they made prayers to the kami of Heaven and Earth.  And they dispatched Hata no Imiki no Iwakatsu to present paper offerings to the Tosa great shrine.  Nothing seemed to be working. In the 9th month, we see the royal princes and others, down to the various ministers, all gathered at Kawaradera making oaths for the health of the sovereigns.  This last ditch effort would go unrewarded.  Five days later, and Ohoama would pass away.  Of course, they couldn't just say that he died:  The Chronicles actually say that he divinely departed.  After all, didn't they call him an incarnate kami? Two days later, the court began the ritual of mourning, raising voices in lamentation, and setting up a temporary palace of interment in the courtyard, south of the palace.  Ohoama's body was placed there some thirteen days later, and people mourned his passing. For the rituals, we see monks and nuns performing ritual lamentation in the courtyard between 3 and 5 am, around the time that court officials would normally be waiting at the gates.  Over the next several days, various ceremonies were held and eulogies given.  We are told that the court presented offerings of food for the dead for the first time, and over the next several days monks and nuns would offer their laments and then various individuals would provide their eulogies.  Finally, on the last day of the ninth month, the eulogies concluded with Nyang-u, a Baekje prince, who pronounced a eulogy on behalf of his father, and then the Miyatsuko of various provinces came and did likewise.  There were also performances of all manner of singing and dancing. With that, the reign of Ohoama would come to an end.  The government would continue under his wife, the Queen, and Crown Prince.  We'll get into the succession in a later episode.  For now I'll just say that he was eventually buried in a large tomb in the modern Noguchi area of Asuka, and you can still go see it. And while that does bring us to the end of the reign, we still have a few more things that I want to discuss.   This episode just seemed a good time to talk about all of the various new years ceremonies, and that seemed to lead naturally into the very last year, but there is still more to discuss.  For one thing, we still haven't quite covered the spread of Buddhism and the changes in the structure.  There are also various laws and punishments that are worth covering.  Finally, there are the Chronicles themselves: we've talked about it all along, but the Nihon Shoki and the Kojiki are attributed to this era, as is the start of what would become the capital of Fujiwara-kyo—many works that Ohoama would not live to see to the end, but is largely held responsible for starting. But until then, if you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

John Bentley has seen some downs, but he didn't let that define him. Instead, he used those struggles to find success, though he went down a few rabbit holes along the way. In this one, hear him discuss his road from the asylum to trucking to construction to helping build a legendary camp out in the woods. Give it a listen, it's a good one. #trucking #construction #land #storytelling #chisel 

John Bentley's early life was simple and rural, focused on his family's farm. Once he became a teenager, though, he started finding trouble. Initially, it was typical teenage trouble, but it soon escalated to the point where he was transporting large amounts and contraband over several states in order to feed his appetite. As a result, he found himself in a facility with a Nurse Ratched, but he used that experience to turn his life around. In this one, hear John discuss his wild early years and how they helped shape him into a productive and relatively calm man. Give it a listen, it's a good one. #farming #countryliving #prison #coldturkey #addiction 

In this powerful episode of the Grow Yourself Podcast, host Kevin McNulty sits down with leadership expert, author, and Air Force veteran John Bentley to explore what it truly means to lead yourself first.Drawing from his book, I Lead Me: Mastering the Act of Self-Leadership to Create the Life You Desire, John shares his journey from personal struggle to transformation — revealing how faith, trust, and intentional action can help you lead with clarity and purpose.Whether you're leading a team, your family, or simply striving to grow as a person, this conversation will inspire you to take ownership of your choices, deepen your faith, and live with greater confidence and integrity.What You'll LearnHow self-leadership starts with self-awarenessThe link between faith and personal growthTurning pain into purpose and transformationHow behavior and trust build influenceThe daily mindset of “I Lead Me”About John BentleyJohn Bentley is a leadership coach, keynote speaker, and founder of Power 2 Transform and You Are a Gift Foundation. His work helps people discover their God-given value and purpose through self-leadership, trust, and emotional intelligence.Book: I Lead Me: Mastering the Act of Self-Leadership to Create the Life You DesireWebsite: https://ileadme.usFoundation: https://youareagift.comConnect with Kevin McNulty & the Grow Yourself PodcastWebsite: https://www.humadyn.comSpotify: Grow Yourself PodcastYouTube: @GrowYourselfPodcastLinkedIn:   / kevinmcnulty  Instagram:   / kevinmcnultyspeaks  Facebook:   / kevinrichardmcnulty  Timestamps 00:00 – Intro01:10 – What self-leadership really means05:45 – John Bentley's journey through faith and transformation12:30 – “I Lead Me” mindset in daily life20:15 – Building trust through behavior28:40 – Living with purpose and humility40:00 – Final thoughts

In this week's episode of Innovation Mavericks, Greg Powell sits down with John Bentley, founder of Power 2 Transform, to explore how true leadership begins with self-leadership. After 21 years in the Air Force and a powerful personal journey of renewal, John shares how discipline, accountability, and emotional awareness can unlock both personal and organizational […] The post Discovering How to Lead Yourself in Order to Lead Others: Insights with John Bentley first appeared on Fi Plan Partners.

The Yay Basketball! crew returns and welcomes new permanent co-host, John Bentley to the show! They discuss the surging Los Angeles Lakers, the SOLID Detroit Pistons, the Cavaliers hold on the one seed, and more!

In this week's episode of "Missing the Point", host Michael Marcangelo, Rayshawn Buchanan, and Bob Kelly dive deep into the New England Patriots' heartbreaking Week 2 overtime loss to the Seattle Seahawks, 23-20. In a game filled with missed opportunities, the hosts break down where things went wrong for the Patriots, including quarterback Jacoby Brissett's struggles to generate consistent offense and the defense's inability to contain Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf, who recorded over 120 receiving yards. Did the Patriots have a chance to win? Absolutely, but a blocked field goal and a lackluster second-half offense left them just short of victory. The team previews the Patriots' Week 3 Thursday Night Football clash against Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets. Can the Patriots' defense, riddled with injuries to key players like Christian Barmore and Ja'Whaun Bentley, rise to the challenge? Will Rhamondre Stevenson and the rushing attack continue to be the team's saving grace? And most importantly, will Brissett bounce back after back-to-back underwhelming performances? Beyond the Patriots, the hosts tackle NFL Week 3 predictions and take a broader look at the league, diving into which teams are climbing the ranks and which ones are falling behind. The discussion also includes thoughts on NFL power rankings, and what fans can expect as the season progresses. Key Topics Covered: Jacoby Brissett's performance: Can the Patriots survive with him at QB? Patriots defense breakdown: How did DK Metcalf dominate, and what's next for the Pats' defense? Injury report: The impact of losing key defensive players like Christian Gonzalez and John Bentley. Thursday Night Football preview: Patriots vs. Jets - Key matchups to watch, including Aaron Rodgers vs. the Patriots secondary. NFL Week 3 predictions: Bold takes on the biggest matchups, including AFC and NFC surprises. NFL power rankings update: Which teams are on the rise and which are falling fast? Whether you're a die-hard Patriots fan or simply love following NFL storylines, this episode delivers everything you need to know heading into Week 3. Tune in for expert analysis, bold predictions, and spirited debates as we break down all the action from the NFL. 0:00 – 8:00: Patriots vs. Seahawks Recap: Breaking down the overtime loss. 8:00 – 15:30: Jacoby Brissett's struggles and what it means for the Patriots' offense. 15:30 – 23:00: Patriots defense analysis: How did DK Metcalf dominate? 23:00 – 30:00: Thursday Night Football Preview: Patriots vs. Jets. 30:00 – 38:00: NFL Week 3 Picks: Predictions for key matchups. 38:00 – 42:00: NFL Power Rankings Update: Which teams are climbing and which are falling? ------------------ Explore more on our website: https://www.MTPshow.com Connect with us on social media: https://linktr.ee/MTPSHOW Meet our hosts: Mike Marcangelo Dave Clarke Rayshawn Buchanan Bob Kelly Produced by Craig D'Alessandro For inquiries, contact Craig at Craig@mtpshow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NEW EPISODE UP! What's your most loved and least favorite song on Squeeze's Sweets From A Stranger album?! Dan picked another non-obvious record by a band we all love for this episode. Whole lotta praise heaped on the masters of UK song styling and we get a surprise text guest ranking from our high school friend Dan Evans before fading back into hiatusland. Listen at WeWillRankYouPod.com, Apple, Spotify and your favorite black coffeehouse.  Follow us and weigh in with your favorites on Facebook, Instagram & Threads and Twitter @wewillrankyoupod . John Bentley, Black Coffee in Bed, Blur, Paul Carrack, Elvis Costello, Chris Difford, The Elephant Ride, Fountains of Wayne, Hall & Oates, His House Her Home, Robyn Hitchcock, Jools Holland, I Can't Hold On, I've Returned, Joe Jackson, Jellyfish, jigsaw, Gilson Lavis, Muppets, new wave, Onto the Dance Floor, Out of Touch, Points of View, the Proclaimers, Frank Sinatra, Don Snow, Squeeze, Stranger Than the Stranger on the Shore, Supergrass, Sweets From A Stranger, Glenn Tilbrook, Tongue Like a Knife, The Very First Dance, we are not new wave, When the Hangover Strikes, XTC, Paul Young, 1982.          US: http://www.WeWillRankYouPod.com wewillrankyoupod@gmail.comhttp://www.facebook.com/WeWillRankYouPodhttp://www.instagram.com/WeWillRankYouPodhttps://www.threads.net/@WeWillRankYouPodhttp://www.twitter.com/WeWillRankYouPo http://www.YourOlderBrother.com(Sam's music page) http://www.YerDoinGreat.com (Adam's music page)https://open.spotify.com/user/dancecarbuzz (Dan's playlists)

This week the guys welcome back series regular John Bentley to talk all things Magic, Suns, Haliburton, Luka, LeBron, the Nuggets, Raptors and more! They also play Quote Unquote, Adjust the Rotation, and answer some burning NBA questions in The Curiosity Corner. https://linktr.ee/yaybasketball for ALL things YB!

We continue our San Diego Comic Con coverage with the cast and creatives behind the upcoming animated series GHOSTS OF RUIN. Jimmy attended the press roundtables for the upcoming series and got to chat with voice over actors AleXa, Karen Strassman, John Bentley, creator PJ Accetturo, director Michael Ryan, and producers Michael Ramey and Katie Stippec. They talked about how the project came together, what to expect, spin-off plans, audience involvement and more! Jimmy also got to slip in a K-Pop question to K-Pop idol AleXa as well. She was an absolute delight about it and lovely in general. Stay tuned for more SDCC interviews! Also, get a hold of us! Thanks for listening!

This week the masterful men give their input on the Celtics comeback, finals predictions, and play exciting games like What Did He Say?, 'Free Agent Frenzy', and guest host John Bentley puts his skills to the test in Guess That Player! They also talk LeBron James and the Warriors, Erik Spoelstra, the top dunkers of all time and more! https://Linktr.ee/YayBasketball for ALL things YB! Be sure to join our Chalkboard group chat!

“Lived Through That” is the companion podcast to my book where I look at influential 90s musicians and where they are today. On this podcast, we'll delve deeper into a single pivotal moment in the lives of some of the artists I feature in the book, as well as other artists I love and admire. The stories they tell are open, honest, and inspiring. Squeeze is one of the most enduring bands of the 80s with timeless songs like “Black Coffee in Bed,” “Tempted,” “Cool for Cats,” “Up The Junction,” and so many others – all that still sound fresh today. In a little bit of a departure from other episodes, this one is structed more like an oral history of the band with Squeeze's singer-songwriter-guitarist Chris Difford, drummer Gilson Lavis, and bassist John Bentley. Plus John Faye from the 90s band The Caulfields. Musical credits: Calmion: Calmion by Blue Dot Sessions Theme song from Audiojungle. You can find out more about Squeeze here You can find out more about John Faye and his book here You can find out more about Gilson Lavis and his art here Be sure to look out for my book, "Lived Through That," where ever you buy your books! You can get 15% your copy of the book NOW by using the promo code PODCAST15 at this link. In addition, my book "80s Redux," is still available - pick up a copy here! You can find out more about my work and the 80s and 90s books at my website here.

ZOINKS!! I was invited to the MultiVersus Roundtables with Matthew Lillard (Shaggy) and Tara Strong (Harley Quinn) as well as Game Developer Tony Huynh and Producer Sheloman Byrd!   MultiVersus is a cross platform Brawler with the Warner Brothers Catalogue of character to choose from including Bugs Bunny and Taz!  The Open Beta is NOW available everywhere! I just got back from Comic-Con where we MultiVersus had their own panel where they announced LeBron James from Space Jam a New Legacy who will be voiced by John Bentley! And following that, we'll see Rick and Morty entering the ever expanding roster! In this episode, I sit down with the voice cast behind two beloved characters in the game, and the creative minds who helped bring about one of the craziest brawlers you'll ever see! Have you played the game? Who is your favorite character? Who do you want to see join the game? Keep it here for more Looney coverage in this three part podcast series concluding with a whole panel breakdown! NEXT UP: TINY TOONS! LOONEY TUNES CARTOONS! & MUCH MORE!   FOLLOW THE SHOW! Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/Thismeanspodcast YOUTUBE - www.Youtube.com/Thismeanspodcast Twitter - Twitter Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ThisMeansPodcast   That's ABSOLUTELY NOT All Folks!

Like you, John Bentley has experienced the ups and downs of life. One moment you are on cloud nine, at other times you become confused not quite sure of where to turn next. Through it all John has come to understand that leading yourself is the key to solving problems that occur so you can live a fulfilled and meaningful life. John has had a successful and honorable career in the Air Force and after he retired from the Air Force, John founded Power 2 Transform. Since 2003 his sole focus is on teaching people how to master the art of self-leadership especially when faced with adversity. His goal whether speaking, coaching or training is always the same – equipping people to leverage their strengths and mitigate their limitations so they can positively influence themselves and others. Some of John's satisfied customers include the Department of Defense, Northeast Georgia Health System, Cullman Regional Medical Center, Bon Secours Mercy Health System, UAB Cancer Center, Merck Pharmaceutical, Alabama Farm Credit and numerous associations. John has received several industry awards to include the Gulf Coast Chamber of Commerce Order of Merit and the Air Education and Training Command Lance P. Sijan Leadership Award. Additionally, he has authored several articles, recently published '52 Ways to Motivate Yourself' and is featured in the book ‘Speaking of Success' along with other business experts such as Ken Blanchard, Jack Canfield, and Stephen Covey. John's daughter, Natalie passed away from complications caused by prescription drug addiction. Her death led him to learn more about this terrible addiction and to the creation of a nonprofit: https://www.youareagift.foundation Leadership Webinars: https://trainleadersvirtually.com or Book: https://power2transform.com/52-ways-to-motivate-yourself/ Website: https://power2transform.com/ Download 5 Imperative of Self-Leadership mini course: www.tinyurl.com/5imperatives For ALL things Successful Diligence: https://linktr.ee/shelmy_life Gateway to Gratitude Course: https://www.michellelperry.com/offers/ioy2KWmg/checkout Sign up for the Newsletter so you never miss a thing! https://www.michellelperry.com We appreciate your support! Every penny helps and really does help and make a difference! https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/support OR https://www.buymeacoffee.com/diligence ~ Thank you for listening and sharing! Copyright © 2022 Successful Diligence™, LLC All rights reserved. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/successfuldiligence/support

The Wicker Man is a 1973 British folk horror film directed by Robin Hardy and starring Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt, and Big Chris Lee. In his 7th appearance on The General Witchfinders. The screenplay by Anthony (frenzy) Shaffer, inspired by David Pinner's 1967 novel Ritual, centres on the visit of Police Sergeant Neil Howie to the isolated island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl. Howie, a devout Christian, is appalled to find that the inhabitants of the island have abandoned Christianity and now practice a form of Celtic paganism.The movie is well-regarded by critics. Film magazine Cinefantastique described it as "The Citizen Kane of horror movies", and in 2004, Total Film magazine named The Wicker Man the sixth greatest British film of all time, and during the 2012 Summer Olympics opening ceremony the film was included as part of a sequence that celebrated British cinema.In 1989, Shaffer wrote a script treatment for The Loathsome Lambton Worm, a direct sequel with fantasy elements. Hardy had no interest in the project, and it was never produced. In 2006, an ill-received American remake was released, from which Hardy and others involved with the original have dissociated themselves. In 2011, a spiritual sequel directed by Hardy entitled The Wicker Tree, was released and featured Lee in a cameo appearance.Television actor Edward Woodward was cast in the role of Sergeant Neil Howie after the part was declined by both Michael York and David Hemmings. In Britain, Woodward was best known for the role of Callan, which he played from 1967 to 1972. After The Wicker Man, Woodward went on to receive international attention for his roles in the 1980 film Breaker Morant and the 1980s TV series The Equalizer.The film was produced at a time of crisis for the British film industry. The studio in charge of production, British Lion Films, was in financial trouble and was bought by wealthy businessman John Bentley. To convince the unions that he was not about to asset-strip the company, Bentley needed to get a film into production quickly. This meant that The Wicker Man, a film set during spring, actually began filming in October 1972: artificial leaves and blossoms had to be glued to trees in many scenes. The production was kept on a small budget. Christopher Lee was extremely keen to get the film made; he and others worked on the production without pay,(Something he seems very keen to mention at every opportunity). While filming took place, British Lion was bought by EMI Films.Iron Maiden released a single called The Wicker Man from their Brave New World album in tribute to the classic film.$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$ Just in case anyone has too much money and wants to give a bit to us to help with our hosting n stuff. It would be amazing if you fancied sending us some pennies - thank you.https://supporter.acast.com/general-witchfinders $£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£$£ Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/general-witchfinders. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week on the Driven Chat Podcast, John Marcar and Amy Shore are joined by script editor and author Richard Porter.Richard Porter is perhaps most famously known as the scriptwriter for Clarkson, Hammond and May for BBC Top Gear and Amazon's The Grand Tour. More controversially, he was a secret satirist for the automotive world through his mysterious yet frankly brilliant website - SNIFFPETROL.com - a website that ultimately granted his career in the TV world.In this chat, Richard unearths the early days of his career with the most fantastic tangents and anecdotes... including a story about being filmed by John Bentley in a mobile phone shop in the late 1990s. Later we hear some incredible stories through the timeline of his work with Clarkson, Hammond and May.Get in touch with the show via email - podcast@drivenchat.com or slip into our DM's on your preferred social feed, and don't forget to check out our youtube channel via YouTube.com/DrivenChat, so see some premium visual car content! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

I still watch Living with the Lions, I still get goosebumps, I still wish I had been there.I had the VHS, I had the DVD. Bentos became my hero and I am lucky to now call him my friend, I love talking to him. Tom Smith was a Scottish Lion more than once, quiet, but awesome. Speaking to these 2 Lions Legends was a massive honour. I hope you enjoy listening.Happiness is Egg ShapedSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/happiness-is-with-bruce-aitchison. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Encouragement Engineering podcast offers listeners the ability to combat the negativity that inundates our daily lives with a positive perspective and positive actions. Our guest today is John Bentley. John is an Author, Leadership Coach, Speaker/Trainer and founder of power2transform and You Are A Gift Foundation. John has come to understand that leading yourself is the key to staying motivated, overcoming challenges, and solving the problems that will occur in your life. But most recently, John has started a Foundation that is needed in our world. You Are A Gift Foundation supports the needs of mothers that are battling prescription pain killer addictions. It also shares the great value our creator gives each one of us to be the best gift we can be to this world. Listen as we discuss: Self-Realization Growth Faith Personal Gifts Value www.youareagift.foundation www.power2transform.com www.linkedin.com/in/johnbentleyspeaks/ https://twitter.com/JohnBentleySpks Be sure to follow The Encouragement Engineering podcast at https://encouragementengineer.com or https://bobbrummspeaks.com --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

eaglecenterforleadership.com

This week, I dive into a subject that has always fascinated me, Spontaneous Human Combustion. I remember seeing what remained of Dr. John Bentley whose remains were discovered in December 1966 and that image has stayed with me all my life.  I'm joined by investigator and author Larry Arnold to discuss this peculiar and terrifying topic and some of the cases he has investigatd and covered in his brilliant book, Ablaze.   We cover several of the most perplexing SHC cases including Dr. Bentley, George Mott and more whilst trying to unravel the disturbing evidence, the sceptical dismissals of the phenomena and just why the wick effect explanation simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It's a challenging and thought provoking conversation and please be aware that some listeners may find some of the descriptions of the scenes disturbing. You can find Larry's book here: His website is here: Thank you to Larry for expanding my knowledge on this subject. Our Patreon is now live, with bonus content, early release of the  regular show, articles and monthly prizes for everyone who signs up! Join here now for the flat fee of $4 a month which is a bargain! Don't forget, you can now show your support with our Merchandise shop on Redbubble! Check it out here! We are also now on Vburl - check us out here:  You can join us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel! Email us at mysteriesandmonsters@gmail.com with any feedback, guest suggestions or if you'd like to appear.  All  artwork by Dean Bestall and the show was produced by Brennan Storr of  the Ghost Story Guys. Mysteries and Monsters is a part of the Straight Up Strange Network. #LarryArnold #Fire #SpontaneousHumanCombustion #Ablaze #DrJohnBentley #MaryReeser #GeorgeMott #Balllightning #Lightning #Ash #Powder #Mysterious 

This man needs very little introduction. Lion.Legend.Absolutely love being able to call him my friend.I loved the chat, I hope you enjoy listening.Happiness is Bentos Shaped See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

We experienced several instances of technical difficulties during the livestream so you can find John's reaction to memorable Barret Moments in separate videos uploaded here on Youtube.com/FinalFanTV as well as a special thank you video to John from us and fellow content creators for his love and support and for such a fantastic performance as Barret!

NBC News Producer John Bentley joins Matt and Samer with a mix of some of his favorite Alternative Country Songs.You can find his Spotify list here:https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3059EMoLpk0Q9qZpQpQVSB?si=f26f07b197fc4174  Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/superawesomemix)

After both the Springboks and the Lions named their squads to play in the second test on Saturday, Tim Cocker goes through some of the interesting selections.Former British and Irish Lion winger John Bentley joins the show to look back on the 1997 tour.Warren Gatland's former teammate at Galwegians RFC in the West of Ireland tells us all about the Lions Head Coach, who could win another series on Saturday.And, Rassie Erasmus breaks his silence over the suggestions he is running a separate Twitter account to highlight the officiating calls which went against the Lions See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As a bonus episode ahead of the first Lions test, Andy Rowe chats with Lions legend John Bentley about the most iconic Lions Tour of all time. Bentos gives us a first-hand account of what really happened in 1997. To read the full story, get your hands on probably the greatest rugby book of all time This Is Your Everest: The Lions, the Springboks and the Epic Tour of 1997 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Description: The series closes with a special tribute to one of the most popular figures on that tour; Scotland and Lions lock forward Doddie Weir. Details: After being diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, Doddie has devoted his life to helping others; raising millions of pounds for research into the incurable condition and support for sufferers, while staying unfailingly positive and upbeat. He inspires everyone he encounters. This is our thanks to you, Doddie Weir. Featuring Doddie Weir and John Bentley. Credits: Presented and researched by Alastair Eykyn. Written by Jonathan Overend. Produced by Danny Garlick and Mark Sharman. Additional voices by Kenny Blyth. Original music and sound design by Lee Sparey. Executive Producer: Liam Thompson. Executive Editor for NinetyFour19: Jonathan Overend. A NinetyFour19 Podcast for Auddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the first Test just over a week away, Will is joined by John ‘Bentos' Bentley, who toured South Africa in 1997. Bentley not only started twice against the Springboks in that series win, but will go down as a Lions legend for his stunning solo try against the Gauteng Lions and antics on ‘Living with Lions'.

John Bentley is the Founder of Artisan Coding, which is committed to building SaaS platforms and their teams with the focus and attention of a craftsperson. John began building software at age 10, learning to build software with his father on a TRS-80 color computer, followed by an early IBM PC XT.  Through his own journey, John expanded his focus on building from the software itself to the organizations that create software. His passion in life is working with SaaS startups as a co-founder, CTO, advisor, consultant, and coach. In this episode:1. John shares his experience in a variety of companies as a mentor and coach.  He talks about how company culture and team dynamics impact software development.  This led him to start Artisan Coding.2. Artisan Coding focuses on artisenry or the quality of work you are producing when developing software.  John discusses how software development processes are different for early stage startups.  By focusing on the customer and the idea, getting it well understood and bridging the gap between the business and the product is very important in launching a successful product.3. John describes the startup journey which consists of 2 phases:  Idea to Market and Scale for Growth.  Each phase has a different focus.  During the Idea to Market phase, you want to learn as much as possible from the customer.  During the Scale for Growth phase, John describes the progression of people to hire.   As you scale, you need role players that are good at what they do.4. John shares his lessons learned for other founders:  First, planning and being intentional about the people you hire is important.  Second, recognize that culture creates the product and the team organization dictates the product and customer experience.  5. Some of the trends John sees include AI and machine learning.  Also tools for SaaS are starting to niche down.  Many products are being developed to find the smallest niche possible to operate in which means more SaaS platforms are goign after smaller, more segmented markete places....and much more!You can reach John Bentley on LinkedIn to learn more about him and Artisan Coding.

Description: The Dirt-Track Guy and his Wonder-Try. Details: The uniqueness of a Lions tour is the schedule; midweek/Saturday, midweek/Saturday. The team you're on is a major clue to whether you're in the test side. It's a delicate process and divisions must be avoided, at all costs. Featuring Neil Jenkins, Will Greenwood and John Bentley. Credits: Presented and researched by Alastair Eykyn. Written by Jonathan Overend. Produced by Danny Garlick and Mark Sharman. Additional voices by Kenny Blyth. Original music and sound design by Lee Sparey. Executive Producer: Liam Thompson. Executive Editor for NinetyFour19: Jonathan Overend. A NinetyFour19 Podcast for Auddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Description: Money's got Stash, Healey wants Cash. In the days before prevalent mobile phones, tour call-ups were made by snail-mail. Stand by for some hilarious stories of how the '97 Lions heard about selection. Then, on meeting their fellow tourists at the team hotel in Weybridge, there were strangers to meet, 'stash' to collect and a random film crew nobody knew anything about... Featuring Austin Healey, Will Greenwood and John Bentley. Contains swearing. Credits: Presented and researched by Alastair Eykyn. Written by Jonathan Overend. Produced by Danny Garlick and Mark Sharman. Additional voices by Kenny Blyth. Original music and sound design by Lee Sparey. Executive Producer: Liam Thompson. Executive Editor for NinetyFour19: Jonathan Overend. A NinetyFour19 Podcast for Auddy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fresh from winning the Premier 15’s title with Quins, Shaunagh Brown joins Lee, Goodie and Seánie to tells us how special the day was. She also explains why she quit athletics after competing in the Commonwealth Games to start playing rugby. And 24 years on from that famous 1997 Lions Tour to South Africa, John Bentley joins the pod to share a few stories from back then and why being a Lion is so special. Join the House of Rugby Facebook GroupWant to hear more great podcasts from JOE?All To Play For, Joe Cole and Tom Davis bring huge guests and hilarious stories from football’s front linesTKO with Carl Frampton, bringing you unprecedented access and brutal honesty from inside the world of boxingSportspages - Dig into the stories behind some of the greatest sports books ever writtenBoys Don't Cry with Russell Kane, the show that gets men talking about the things men never talk aboutUnfiltered with James O'Brien, our critically-acclaimed and award-nominated interview seriesPioneers with John Amaechi - Meet the trailblazers behind Britain’s most exciting businesses

The crew takes on the 1958 black and white movie Submarine Seahawk. This sub movie was direct by Spencer Gordon Bennet, and stars John Bentley, Brett Halsey, and Wayne Heffley. A new captain is given command of a recon mission with a crew who is only used to bloodshed, can he win them over? Can he help win the war?

Chapter 1: In spite of many delayed film releases, the 78th Golden Globes were held virtually last night, with superstar comedians Tina Fey and Amy Poehler hosting together for the fourth time.  Guest: Chris Jancelewicz, Global News Entertainment Journalist. Chapter 2: Building a wall around long-term care homes to protect them from COVID-19 has been instrumental in preventing even more outbreaks than we’ve had.  Vaccines are the next step in protecting our seniors, and we want to highlight a phenomenal program providing people connected to that industry with clear answers about getting inoculated.  Guest: Matt Hacker Teper, medical student at the University of Toronto and the Volunteer Program Manager at COVID-19 Resources Canada. Chapter 3: Donald Trump is back in the limelight after speaking yesterday for the first time since President Joe Biden took office.  Trump addressed a crowd of Republicans at the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference, repeating claims of election fraud and dispelling rumours he might consider starting his own party.  Guest: Reggie Cecchini, Global News Washington Correspondent. Chapter 4: Some fascinating preliminary data from Stats Canada this morning showing low-income households REALLY benefited from the pandemic support measures put in place by the government. Chapter 5: Some buildings or intersections in Vancouver seem to change every couple of months, but others have been around almost as long as the city itself.  Local photographer John Bentley has a fascinating project called Now and Then that caught our attention, and he joins us this morning with more on how it came to be.  Guest: John Bentley, Vancouver Photographer. Chapter 6 : Billions of dollars in cost overruns and we’re nowhere near completion. Premier John Horgan confirmed Friday that the province will continue with the Site C dam project in Northern B-C, even though the final price tag remains unknown.  Guest: Bruce Ralston, Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. Chapter 7: Unintended consequences from the new federal gun bill, C-21.  People in the popular Airsoft industry say the ban on replica weapons will destroy their sport.  Guest:  Justin Kirkwood, Airsoft In Canada representative for British Columbia, Airsoft event organizer with Omega Ops. Chapter 8: Do you avoid the snack aisle in the grocery store? Why is it so much harder to resist sweet treats when you KNOW they’re in the cupboard?  The author of the hit book Salt, Sugar, Fat, Michael Moss, has a new book out. Hooked: Food Free Will, and how the Food Giants Exploit our Addictions, is all about how we’re manipulated in ways we might not even realize.  Guest: Michael Moss, author of Hooked, and Salt, Sugar, Fat Chapter 9: There’s an astonishing lack of options for people who are diagnosed with A-L-S in B-C. There are over a hundred known therapies for the condition but none of them are available to people who live here.  We’re going to be examining the state of A-L-S treatment here over the next few weeks because it’s a condition affecting thousands of Canadians.  Guest: Brad MacKenzie, Living with ALS and ALS BC Advocacy Committee Chair. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Encouragement Engineering podcast offers listeners the ability to combat the negativity that inundates our daily lives with a positive perspective and positive actions. Our guest today is John Bentley, Author, Leadership Coach, Speaker/Trainer and founder of power2transform. John has come to understand that leading yourself is the key to staying motivated, overcoming challenges, and solving the problems that will occur in your life. Since 2003, John’s sole focus has been on helping people master the imperatives of self-leadership, especially when faced with adversity. His goals, whether speaking, coaching, or facilitating workshop are always the same – equipping people with the skills to build trust, inspired commitment and lead collaborative teams so they can bring out the best in themselves and others. Listen as we discuss: Humility Self-Worth Communication & Connection Personal Values Positive talk www.power2transform.com www.trainleadersvirtually.com www.linkedin.com/in/johnbentleyspeaks/ https://twitter.com/JohnBentleySpks --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

John and Frankie join Faith Backstage for an in-depth conversation about the current state of our country, their experiences after the death of victims like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and how they model the love of Christ in all every aspect of their lives.

John's aha moment came early in his Air Force career when he received feedback that his leadership style under pressure was similar to someone opening a coke can after it was shaken. This led him on a journey to discover why he behaved poorly in tough situations. The findings John uncovered were not easy to accept, but he possessed the desire to learn and willingness to overcome limiting beliefs that caused him to spiral out of control. In this episode, John and Mark discuss strengths, the delegation of weaknesses, overusing your strengths, leadership, and more. His website   Click here to join me on August 14th at Noon EST (11 am CST) for a live training: Technology and Your Productivity.   If you'd like to support the show, you can click here to give a one-time gift in any amount or go to paypal.me/markstruczewski.   Get my top 5 productivity tips for free! or go to MarkStruczewski.com/top5!   Become a Mark Struczewski Insider or go to MarkStruczewski.com/insider for productivity tips!   ABOUT Mark ‘Ski' Struczewski (“Mister Productivity”) works with executives to help them gain control of their time by taming distractions so they can experience less overwhelm, feel a sense of freedom, and enjoy their lives.   In addition to being a productivity coach, Mark is a speaker, host of The Mark Struczewski Podcast and an author. His strategies have guided CEOs/Executive Directors, business owners, business corporate specialists, and entrepreneurs to get back control of their time. You can find out more about how to connect with Mark and his mission to create confident leaders at misterproductivity.com.   If you're looking to take your productivity to the next level or if you are interested in bringing me in to speak at your event, visit MarkStruczewski.com.   Follow me: LinkedIn   If you love the show, share it with a friend on Apple Podcasts.

John's aha moment came early in his Air Force career when he received feedback that his leadership style under pressure was similar to someone opening a coke can after it was shaken. This led him on a journey to discover why he behaved poorly in tough situations. The findings John uncovered were not easy to accept, but he possessed the desire to learn and willingness to overcome limiting beliefs that caused him to spiral out of control. In this episode, John and Mark discuss strengths, the delegation of weaknesses, overusing your strengths, leadership, and more. His website Click here to join me on August 14th at Noon EST (11 am CST) for a live training: Technology and Your Productivity. If you'd like to support the show, you can click here to give a one-time gift in any amount or go to paypal.me/markstruczewski. Get my top 5 productivity tips for free! or go to MarkStruczewski.com/top5! Become a Mark Struczewski Insider or go to MarkStruczewski.com/insider for productivity tips! ABOUT Mark ‘Ski' Struczewski (“Mister Productivity”) works with executives to help them gain control of their time by taming distractions so they can experience less overwhelm, feel a sense of freedom, and enjoy their lives. In addition to being a productivity coach, Mark is a speaker, host of The Mark Struczewski Podcast and an author. His strategies have guided CEOs/Executive Directors, business owners, business corporate specialists, and entrepreneurs to get back control of their time. You can find out more about how to connect with Mark and his mission to create confident leaders at misterproductivity.com. If you're looking to take your productivity to the next level or if you are interested in bringing me in to speak at your event, visit MarkStruczewski.com. Follow me: LinkedIn If you love the show, share it with a friend on Apple Podcasts.

This week we are once again joined by our newly adopted uncle John Bentley. In a post FFVIIR world we have a nice discussion on how things have been going since launch and how the pandemic has effected things in the life of a actor. Always a pleasure having this man on and hope you all do as well. Enjoy!

In this episode, John Bentley and I discuss topics related to:Learning how to control oneself before trying to change anyone elseLearning to master our stories that we create in our heads to live our most authentic lifeLearning techniques on how to engage in difficult conversationsThe power of the DiSC personality profile and how it can help increase our leadership awarenessGrief: a powerful story of loss and meaning makingAn emphasis on great performers focusing more on Being, rather than Doing.

We are joined today by legendary actor and voice actor John Eric Bentley from Final Fantasy VII Remake on Hawaii's #1 Podcast, The Kasanova Podcast! We're talking his career, acting, voice acting and more! John Eric Bentley Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnEricBentley Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnericbentley/ IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0072829/ Be sure to visit www.MekelKasanova.com for updates, news, podcasts, and much more. You might like these videos from my channel: Kathy Dongo of Capcom USA Interview - https://youtu.be/mlLKAy-YBf0 BETTER than ARCADE1UP? | CAPCOM HOME ARCADE REVIEW - https://youtu.be/2XokRZRfHrU Nick Apostolides The Voice of Resident Evil 2 Remake Leon Kennedy - https://youtu.be/T1mjs14Ogok PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/MekelKasanova YT MEMBERSHIP: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLLAKtxpwPMXfaEtNBw0yMg/join DONATIONS: https://streamelements.com/mekelkasanova-2378/tip TWITTER: http://twitter.com/MekelKasanova FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/MekelKasanova INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/MekelKasanova DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Mmz9pM5 Mekel Kasanova is a journalist that writes reviews and impressions on my website for various companies as well as host the #1 podcast in Hawaii, The Kasanova Podcast, where I interview celebrities, actors and voice actors, tech and video game industry staff, journalists, game and movie composers, content creators, and more with the aim of his show being to educate people on whatever field his guest is in and to give them a peek behind the veil and a howto if they want to get into said industry plus it's all about organic conversations with my guests and centers around not only what they do but them as a person and individual Business Inquiries: Mekel@mekelkasanova.com Channel Members: Zero_Fanatic, Avidan Smith, Studio Nicktendo, Chris Kurosaki, Devil Hunter Nero, Charis Oldfield, UltraGamer, Rastalyfe Reggae, Elim 99, Denomi808, Cloudymind_CMG, NXRevolution, fangirl98 Patrons: Shane, Devin Wolery/PCGamerZHawaii, Miguela Cruzeta, Tou Thao, Edward Bishop, Zachary Powell, Chipz-N-Stix, SpryteMix, Shannon Robinson/3RShow, Anthony Jordan, ZeroGround 00

Episode 70 - The Final Fantasy 7 Reunion Is At Hand W/ John Bentley by Crashing Game Night

John Bentley is a Leadership Coach, Speaker, and Trainer who helps Healthcare Organizations Develop Emotionally Intelligent Leaders and Collaborative Team Players. John’s goal when coaching is simple, to help successful clinical and non-clinical healthcare leaders achieve positive, lasting behavior change for themselves, their people, their teams and their family.John joined us today to chat about the effect that the COVID-19 virus is having on individuals and teams inside our healthcare institutions today.The powerful takeaway from today’s conversation is how individuals inside and out of healthcare organizations, including our communities can ask, not “What can I do to help you?”, but rather, “What do need?”.To learn more about John and his work, he invites you to visit his website at http://www.power2transform.com/. He also invites you to contact him if you or someone you know is a First Responder and struggling during this crisis, and would like to chat.You can also connect with John on the following social sites:LinkedInYou can also find John's book, 52 Ways to Motivate Yourself: A One Year Journey for Living a Positive Life in a Complicated World, on Amazon.The SuccessInSight Podcast is a production of Fox Coaching, Inc. and First Story Strategies.

Welcome back to The Reunion: An FFVIIR Podcast! In this episode, Ky and Vyzz discuss their FFVIIR Demo impressions, including some of their gripes with the demo! During the first segment, they also talk about various recently released FFVIIR news articles featuring interviews from Kitase and Nomura (spoilers NOT included!). During the second segment, Ky talks about his experience at the KupoCon FFVIIR Launch Party, and what it was like meeting Barret's voice actor John Bentley! It also features an exclusive interview with FFVII cosplayers Lady Serenity, Daru Chai Cosplay, and Natalah! At the end of the episode, Ky talks about his birthday experience at the FFVII focused Distant Worlds Orchestra performance in Montreal, PAX East, and Candy Bar FFVIIR DLC! As always, thanks so much for listening and sticking with us to the end! Don't forget to enter for the Physical Deluxe Edition GIVEAWAY!! Best of luck, kupo!! Special thanks to Mono Memory for the music in this episode! Featured track: Final Fantasy VII Remake OST - Mako Reactor [Mono Memory Cover] Song Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hURti4bozd4 YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/monomemory Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/monomemorymusic/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/monomemory85 FFVIIR Physical Deluxe Edition GIVEAWAY details: To place your entry into the giveaway you must: 1. Subscribe to The Reunion: An FFVIIR Podcast 2. Give a 5 star rating on any podcast app or service/website that you use for listening to podcasts. 3. Write a text review on any podcast app or service/website that you use for listening to podcasts. If you cannot leave a rating or a text review on the podcast app that you use, please subscribe to our YT channel, like one of our videos, and write a comment on any of our videos to enter for the giveaway! Limit to one entry per review. Prize will be drawn one week before the game releases. Contact Us: Questions, ideas, inquiries? Send an email! Or join our Discord! E-mail: thereunionpodcast@gmail.com Discord: https://discord.gg/d7X7UBw7UV YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOZRQWIXXHKHvEt6WZYH2cA Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Reunion_Podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReunionPodcast Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/thereunionpodcast Check out Vyzz and the Cosmo Canyon Observatory community here: Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/EyjHzbZ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/Vyzzuvazzadth/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/CC_Observatory Twitch: http://www.twitch.tv/cosmocanyonobservatory Check out Lady Serenity, Daru Chai Cosplay, and Natalah here: Lady Serenity Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lady.serenity Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theladyserenity/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/BritLynstar Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/brittlynstar Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/ladyserenity Natalah: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natalah_/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/natalah_ Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/natalah Daru Chai Cosplay: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Daru-Chai-Cosplay-926219550759290/

In tonight’s 29th Saturday Night Special John Bentley and I talk about his views on leadership, both good and bad.  John shares some of his top tips on what makes people follow a leader.  John and I also talk with you about how your mindset controls what you do as a leader.   Show Notes and Resources

This week we are joined by our very special guest and voice of Barrett of Final Fantasy VII Remake. Had a fantastic time hearing about his journey as both an Actor and VA. So much knowledge and experience and we could not be more honored to have him on. Hope you all enjoy as much as we did!

This month on MDX we welcome John Bentley from the cast of Final Fantasy VII to discuss, voice acting, classic gaming and the Red Owl.

On this episode of the podcast, Barrett voice actor John Bentley crashes game night along with special co-host Drew Creasman of the Final Fantasy Weekly podcast to talk Final Fantasy and what this season means to all of us. Check out our Facebook page or @cgnpodcast or @cgn_matt for our holiday giveaway that ends 12/27/2019 as well!

John Bentley, Co-Founder and Head of Marketing for The International TEFL Academy stops by this week to talk about how growing up overseas paved the way for a life and profession of international travel and how his company helps others achieve their dream of living abroad by teaching English as a foreign language all over the world.   #RespectTheHat Guest Beer: Tiger Brewery - Singapore Tiger Asian Lager, 5% ABV, 18 IBU "Brewed in Singapore since 1932, Tiger Beer is a full-flavored, pilsner-style golden lager with a slightly sweet note and amazingly clean finish. 2010 World Beer Cup Gold Medal (international style lager)." 3890 Tigers   Angie's Mystery Beer: Hopworks Urban Brewery (HUB) - Portland, OR Ace of Spades, Imperial IPA, 8.6% ABV - The Sequel  "NW hops added at every stage of the brewing process: mash tun, first wort, kettle, hop back and dry-hop. Big citrus and resinous hop aromas and flavors. Clean, crisp bitter finish."   Episode Links: International TEFL Academy Cairo American College Harvard University Animal House Kingfisher Steve Kerr  Egypt Guide by John Bentley IV Medill School of Journalism Great Falls Tribune Waterloo Courier Hubspot Flywheel 

On our latest episode, the voice of Barrett in FF7remake, John Bentley crashes game night to talk about WalMart removing "violent" video games ads, Twitch poor handling of Ninja's departure, rumors that Microsoft may put first party titles onto the Switch and PS4, as well as John's career in acting from Sailor Moon on up to his role in Final Fantasy 7 Remake.

John Bentley

John Bentley Harmony Outreach

John Bentley, Founder of Power 2 Transform, returns to the #SuccessInSight podcast to chat with Randy Ford about creating a safe environment when delivering performance feedback.After finishing a day giving appraisal feedback to his employees, John shares about the importance of setting-up an environment that creates meaning for the employee - unplugging the phone, turning off the computer and cell phone. John coaches other leaders to appreciate, that when giving feedback, show your team that they’re the most important person to you at that moment. Create a safe place that also sets the opportunity for them to just be open and share with you as you provide feedback about their performance.John also shares his Insight2Go.For more info about John, you can find him on LinkedIn, or contact him via his website at www.power2transform.com

John Bentley, Founder of Power 2 Transform, returns to the #SuccessInSight podcast to chat with Randy Ford about influence.When you lose control, you lose the ability to influence, and influence is a two-sided coin. First of all, you lose the ability, when you lose control, to positively influence others, and then you lose the ability for others to positively influence you.John also shares his Insight2Go.For more info about John, you can find him on LinkedIn, or contact him via his website at https://www.power2transform.com.Please visit https://successinsightpodcast.com to read the full transcript of this episode and to listen to more selections and read the transcripts from the podcast library.

In this episode I read one of my all-time favorite essays about universal basic income and how our goal as a society should be full unemployment, not full employment. This essay was written by John Bentley back in 2005, and was one of the earlier things I ever read about UBI that I've read over and over again since, and as a result has greatly influenced my own thinking. By sharing it with all of you now, I hope it will influence your own thinking as well. Read the essay: https://www.philorum.org/speech/20051207JohnBentley.html For more info about UBI, please refer to my UBI FAQ: scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq You can support these podcasts through Anchor or Patreon: patreon.com/scottsantens --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/scottsantens/support

The SuccessInSight Podcast was launched in February 2019. In this look-back episode, Howard & Randy reflect on their "chance meeting" at a local BNI chapter event and the subsequent launch of the podcast. The episode also includes a brief discussion & sharing of memorable guest highlights along with hints about episodes currently in production. Howard & Randy hope to publish future look-backs as the episode catalog grows. Visit https://firststorystrategies.com to learn more about Randy and his work.Visit https://foxcoaching.com to learn more about Howard and his work.Please visit https://successinsightpodcast.com to read the full transcript of this episode and to listen to more selections and read the transcripts from our podcast library.

FORCEOF1 Presents Join the Broadcast: 1️⃣✔️ #FORCEOF1 #OpenBroadcast Every Monday | Facebook Live 9 PM EST Every Tuesday | 8 PM EST Call: 515-739-1037 Code: 753907# Speaker: John Bentley Host: Dr. Frank Marshall •1️⃣ Follow FORCEOF1 https://linktr.ee/forceof1

John Bentley, Founder of Power 2 Transform, returns to the #SuccessInSight Podcast to share more insight on leadership. John shares a number of client stories, including:How he came to work with his first healthcare clientCommunicating with mutual respect The meaning of Fuss, Cuss, and DiscussHolding space for others to get things out on the tableJohn also shares his Insight2Go.For more info about John, you can find him on LinkedIn, or contact him via his website at https://www.power2transform.com.Please visit https://successinsightpodcast.com to read the full transcript of this episode and to listen to more selections and read the transcripts from the podcast library.

The Conversations on Courage Podcast, A podcast for women who dare to live bold and courageous lives unapologetically! The conversation is down to earth and full of life. Real People. Real Talk. Real Inspiration. The Conversations on Courage Podcast Hosted By RJ Jackson www.conversationsoncourage.com RJ Jackson The Courage Giver Interviews Guest John Bentley, Leadership Expert www.power2transform.com Topic - The G.I.F.T. The Courage Giver TheCourageGiver.com

#SuccessInSight is pleased to introduce John Bentley, Founder of Power 2 Transform.John is a leadership coach, trainer, and facilitator. He works with healthcare leaders to develop behaviors that build trust, maximize influence & achieve better results faster through & with others so they can effectively manage the daily pressures caused by:financial pressures scrutinized clinical quality outcomesextremely high levels of changechronic staffing shortages John shares examples that shaped his own development as a leader, including lessons from his father, grandmother, his commanding officer, and even his own son.For more info about John, you can find him on LinkedIn, or contact him via his website at https://www.power2transform.com.Please visit https://successinsightpodcast.com to read the full transcript of this episode and to listen to more selections and read the transcripts from the podcast library.

Welcome to the Up2Me Magazine Show with Host Gabby G and Special Guests John Eric Bentley, Actor and Patrick Walsh, Executive Producer with the smash CBS hit "Living Biblically". Topic:  "Living Biblically"  In this episode Gabby G, John and Patrick talk about their roles in the CBS Comedy show "Living Biblically" and how they balance their careers, family and faith. Please visit the Up2Me Magazine Show Page at www.up2meradio.com to learn more about John and Patrick through their bios. The opinions expressed during this broadcast are for inspiration, information and motivational purposes. This show is a production of Up2Me Radio and to learn more about our network, shows, hosts and guests visit us at www.up2meradio.com Enjoy the Conversation!  Continue the conversation with us on Facebook at Up2Me Radio and follow us on Twitter @Up2Meradio

Former Lions centre Tom Shanklin and BBC 5 live rugby union reporter Chris Jones join Caroline Barker to review the Lions' convincing win over the Chiefs on Tuesday and discuss who head coach Warren Gatland will select for the first Test against New Zealand on Saturday. The panel are also joined by ex-Lions winger John Bentley, who reacts to the news his friend and former team mate Doddie Weir has been diagnosed with motor neurone disease.

It was Tourism Tuesday LIVE from Bowling Green Country Club with co-host Justin Kerns "The Winchester Tourism Guy" from the Winchester-Frederick County Convention and Visitors Bureau - and his guests, John Bentley and David Lee, pitchers for the Valley Baseball League - Winchester Royals. We talked about their experiences playing baseball in the Shenandoah Valley and their hopes and goals for their future careers. For a schedule and bio(s) of the Winchester Royals team, click here.

It was Tourism Tuesday LIVE from Bowling Green Country Club with co-host Justin Kerns "The Winchester Tourism Guy" from the Winchester-Frederick County Convention and Visitors Bureau - and his guests, John Bentley and David Lee, pitchers for the Valley Baseball League - Winchester Royals. We talked about their experiences playing baseball in the Shenandoah Valley and their hopes and goals for their future careers. For a schedule and bio(s) of the Winchester Royals team, click here.

John Bentley is the co-founder of the craft crawler app for the iPhone, now on version 2.0,  that helps you find nearby craft brewers wherever you are in the United States.

In this episode we're joined by Craft Crawler founder John Bentley, and we’ll be discussing Florida Law, Utter Despair and Sommelier Summit! So crack open your beer, uncork that wine and let’s get drinking.

Dan Calley joins IPCs from across the country to talk about some of the amazing success being generated through n3. On the call: Barb Pohlman, John Bentley, Roy Jr. Fontenette and more!

TNI's first IPC leaders - Ken Roland, Floyd Holdman, Del Williams, Tom Thornton, Kevin Baadsgaard, Mark Rose, and John Bentley - join TNI founders Kerry Asay, John Wadsworth, and Kelly Olsen for the most powerful conference call in TNI history!