POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa

Ken Nishikawa
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  • Society & Culture
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Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa is a weekly talk show about everything and nothing - and a little bit about Japan, the West (Britain, in particular), and the vast, baffling space in between — covering music, culture, food, history, politics, philosophy, and whatever else demands attention that particular week. Hosted by Ken Nishikawa — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what's good for you.

  1. 4d ago

    Tokyo Is a State of Mind: The Vanishing World of the Edokko

    This week on Post-Whatever, I dedicate it to my late grannie, who once single-handedly talked down a gang of sword-and-gun-wielding yakuza at her own front gate, using nothing but attitude. She also survived two firebombings of Tokyo, one of them by falling asleep on her own roof while 500 B-29 bombers flew overhead. Not fled. Not hid. Fell asleep. She was what's called an Edokko — old-school, working-class Tokyo, three generations deep, allergic to saving money, prone to flying into loud, theatrical rages, and speaking a coarse dialect called Beranmei, itself an aggressive contraction of a sentence meaning: "What the f**k are you talking about?" Also in this episode: why “Baka yarou (you bloody fool)” is how these people said "I love you,"  and the correct — non-negotiable — way to dip your soba. Fair warning: I do eventually admit this is all rather romanticised, and that Edo wasn't some socialist utopia. But some of what these people valued is still worth stealing for the present day. It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Tokyo #Podcast #OldTokyo #JapaneseHistory

    Tokyo Is a State of Mind: The Vanishing World of the Edokko

  2. Sep 24

    Dual-Layered Languages: What English and Japanese Have in Common

    This week on Post-Whatever, I do something I almost never allow myself: point out what English and Japanese have in common, rather than spending the usual twenty minutes explaining why they're linguistically about as compatible as oil and a kettle. Turns out both languages are secretly the same trick played twice. English is a Formula One car with a German engine and a French chassis — Anglo-Saxon grammar underneath, nearly a millennium of French and Latin vocabulary bolted on top after the Normans turned up in 1066 and rearranged the furniture. Japanese runs the identical con: Yamato Kotoba, the ancient native language, as the engine, and Kango — Sino-Japanese vocabulary imported via Korea and China — as the elegant, official-sounding bodywork. Same sentence, two entirely different vocabularies, depending on whether you want to sound like a farmer or a barrister. And when things get properly serious — drowning-in-a-river serious — neither language reaches for the fancy one.  Along the way: a 2,600-year Imperial family tree that gets distinctly wobblier the closer you look at it, several legendary emperors who apparently lived past 130 (some considerably past), a genuinely contested academic theory about where the first Emperor of Japan may really have come from, and the story of why Japan's first bullet train was named after light and an echo, rather than something with more syllables and considerably less soul. Fair warning: this one wanders into territory Japanese academia would rather leave well alone. Consider yourself warned, and invited. It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Tokyo #Podcast #Linguistics #JapaneseHistory

    Dual-Layered Languages: What English and Japanese Have in Common

  3. Sep 17

    Music Channel Honjo 7 Fushigi: Edo's Ghosts, Reimagined as a Walking Tour

    This week on Post-Whatever, I finally talk about the project I've been not-so-subtly hinting at for weeks: the music I composed for Music Channel Honjo Seven Fushigi, an audio installation by contemporary artist Hiroko Okada for Sumida Art Festival 2026. It's also completely free to experience — like all the best things in life. A quick disclosure up front: this episode is a blatant, shameless plug for my own work, and I've made no attempt to disguise it as anything else. That said, it's also stuffed with genuinely fascinating, slightly odd nuggets of Edo-era history, so hopefully the plugging is at least in good company. The work unfolds across Honjo — from Ryogoku Station through to Kinshicho, roughly 90 minutes to 2 hours on foot — with a fictional radio drama unlocked at seven QR-coded points along the route, each built around one of the "Seven Wonders of Honjo," ghost stories and folklore passed down since the Edo period. Along the way: a tale of vengeance and one-sided reeds by Ryogoku Bridge, a tidal garden that now fakes its own tides, a Tanuki in therapy, Hokusai's overlooked daughter Ooi, a rock band made entirely of monsters and ghosts, and a Kappa politely denying she's a fish thief. I also get into the history behind it all — Edo's staggering population at its peak, the philosophy behind "money is a circulating commodity in the realm," and why a two-and-a-half-century stretch of peace produced some of Japan's best ghost stories. Installation route: Ryogoku Station → Honjo → Kinshicho (free to experience) Audio installation by Hiroko Okada, part of Sumida Art Festival 2026 Music composed by Ken Nishikawa It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Tokyo #Podcast #JapaneseHistory #Yokai

    Music Channel Honjo 7 Fushigi: Edo's Ghosts, Reimagined as a Walking Tour

  4. Sep 10

    How to Annoy a Simpleton in a Comfy Echo Chamber

    What do you get when you tell someone in Japan you once lived in Britain for a few years? Hint: it is always, without fail, a question about the food. This week on Post-Whatever, I go looking for the exact moment a perfectly nice conversation turns into a stereotype convention — and find it, reliably, in the first thirty seconds of talking about the UK. I mount, in my own defence, a fairly bold claim: that London's food scene beats Tokyo's, and that watching a (Japanese) stranger's face try to process this information is one of life's great, cheap pleasures. From there it's a proper rant — bigotry that's too polite to notice itself, "pure" Japanese identity deployed with a completely straight face, and the particular, kettle-warmed comfort of an echo chamber where absolutely nobody is going to disagree with you. I make a case for the intellectual chameleons among us — the rare few who can argue either side of a political argument convincingly, purely to raise the standard of the room. There's a brief, unresolved argument with myself about the episode's own title. There's a Joni Mitchell reference that turns unexpectedly zen. And there's a closing thought on the people who are the opposite of intellectual chameleons — the ones willing to die on a hill for what they believe — that will either move you or annoy you, and possibly both. It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #Japan #Podcast #Tokyo #EchoChamber #Bigotry #Culture

    How to Annoy a Simpleton in a Comfy Echo Chamber

  5. Sep 3

    Business as Usual (Since 578 AD) - How Japan Builds Companies That Won't Take the Hint

    What's the oldest company in the world? Hint: it's not a bank, and it's had a rather eventful 1,448 years. This week on Post-Whatever, we go looking for the oldest business on Earth and find it in Osaka. Founded in 578 AD, back when Britain didn't yet have a written language, Kongō Gumi spent the next fourteen centuries building Buddhist temples, survived civil wars, a 250-year lockdown, two atomic bombs, and a stock market crash — only to be finished off by, of all things, some rather enthusiastic real estate investing in the 1980s. There's a lesson in there somewhere, and it isn't the one you'd expect. But Kongō Gumi is just the beginning. We count down six of the world's top ten oldest companies (all Japanese, obviously), meets a hotel that's been run by the same family for 52 generations, and a Kyoto confectionery shop that's sold exactly one thing since the year 1000 — no rebrand, no seasonal menu, just the one mochi skewer, forever. Then the real question: why does Japan have more centuries-old companies than the rest of the world combined? We have some theories — involving the concept of adopting your way out of a useless heir, a healthy allergy to debt, and a slightly provocative argument about religion, revolutions, and why nobody in Japan got the guillotine treatment. Expect at least one aside about the imperial family that will annoy the correct people. It's business advice, ancient history, and mild religious controversy, delivered with the usual Post-Whatever disregard for staying on topic. It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #Japan #JapaneseCulture #Podcast #Tokyo #History

    Business as Usual (Since 578 AD) - How Japan Builds Companies That Won't Take the Hint

  6. Aug 27

    Confusion Cuisine, or How Japan Learned to Love Beef

    For over a thousand years, eating beef in Japan was considered spiritually ruinous — the sort of thing that got you some very serious side-eye from the neighbours, if not outright bad karma. Then, in 1872, the Emperor sat down and ate a piece of it on purpose, as an act of government policy. A group of armed monks were, understandably, not thrilled about this and stormed the Imperial Palace to say so. It did not end well for the monks. This week on Post-Whatever, we trace how that spectacularly awkward beginning somehow led to katsu curry, omurice, and sukiyaki — dishes now so thoroughly Japanese that most people have no idea they were essentially invented to trick an entire nation into eating cow.  Along the way: why Japanese curry has nothing to do with India and everything to do with the British Navy, how Worcestershire sauce quietly lost its anchovies on the way to becoming a national condiment, and how the same forbidden meat that once got monks shot is now called Wagyu and treated like a minor deity. It's a story of tradition, invented on the spot and by government decree — which, if you squint, describes rather a lot of things people now call "traditional." It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #JapaneseFood #WagyuBeef #FoodHistory #Podcast #JapanHistory

    Confusion Cuisine, or How Japan Learned to Love Beef

  7. Aug 13

    80 years of karmic circle - Japanese history repeats itself

    Every 80 years or so, Japan seems to hit "reset" — and then, with almost suspicious precision, proceeds to repeat itself. In this episode, I lay out a rather uncomfortable historical pattern: 1868 and 1945, two total reinventions of the nation, each followed by exactly the same 40-years-humble, 40-years-hubris arc — right down to a spectacular economic collapse at the end of both. Meiji Japan modernised itself out of feudalism, then talked itself into Pearl Harbor. Postwar Japan rebuilt itself out of the rubble, then talked itself into believing it could buy California. You can probably see where this is going. Japan, seemingly, cannot help itself. Along the way: the real story behind Japan's "2,600 years undefeated" myth, why beating Russia in 1904 mattered rather more than winning a war usually does, the numbers behind the bubble economy that briefly made the Tokyo Stock Exchange bigger than Wall Street, and a Buddhist concept that might explain why Japan seems allergic to changing course on its own. (Yes, I'm aware this makes two war-adjacent episodes in a row. It's mid-August in Japan, it's unavoidable, I promise to lighten up next time. Also — I'm off next week for Obon, so consider this your homework before the break.) It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #KenNishikawa #JapaneseHistory #MeijiRestoration #Podcast

    80 years of karmic circle - Japanese history repeats itself

  8. Aug 6

    The Atomic Bomb - Crime Against Humanity That Saved Millions of Lives

    CONTENT WARNING: This is, by some distance, the most divisive episode of Post-Whatever to date. If you've enjoyed the show so far because it's mostly kept you mildly amused rather than genuinely furious — today may be the day that changes, well, maybe. Buckle up. Listener discretion, and possibly a stiff drink, advised. 81 years ago today, at 8:15 in the morning, the world entered the nuclear age over a city full of civilians. We're still arguing about it. We probably always will. In this episode, I try to hold two seemingly incompatible truths at once: that the bombs may have averted millions of deaths from a planned invasion of Japan bigger than D-Day itself, and that the way — and speed — with which they were used still troubles me deeply. Along the way: the peace feelers Washington already knew about and chose to ignore, a Soviet invasion of Hokkaido that came within a presidential "no" of happening, the Imperial Japanese Navy's last battleship gathering dust, women and children armed with bamboo spears, and my own entirely unqualified opinion on what I personally think Truman should have done with those dreadful bombs. I expect to annoy absolutely everyone, from patriots to pacifists, in this one, in scrupulously equal measure. If that's not balance, I don't know what is. (Fair warning: I expect some genuinely heated comments on this one. I'm up to my neck in work at present, so — say what you like, I probably won't be reading or replying. Sorry. At least, it does magic  for the algorithm) It's a junkyard of useless knowledge.  It's occasionally quite funny and merciless. It's the gnarliest multi-cultural listening ride. Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa — weekly cultural commentary on the space between Japan and the West, presented by Ken — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday (except next week, because I'm busy bragging about my music production). Like and subscribe if you know what’s good for you and partial to being mildly offended. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and YouTube. Search: POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa FOLLOW ME on: facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Hiroshima #Nagasaki #WWII #History #AtomicBomb #Podcast #JapanHistory

    The Atomic Bomb - Crime Against Humanity That Saved Millions of Lives
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Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa is a weekly talk show about everything and nothing - and a little bit about Japan, the West (Britain, in particular), and the vast, baffling space in between — covering music, culture, food, history, politics, philosophy, and whatever else demands attention that particular week. Hosted by Ken Nishikawa — composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man — who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, J-WAVE, and several organisations that probably regret it. New episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe if you know what's good for you.

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