POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa

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,...

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-S...

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, shame...

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 cl...

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 loc...

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...

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...

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 nucl...

Long before Pakkun, before Katsura Sunshine took rakugo to West End and Broadway, there was an Australian who beat them all to it by about 130 years — and did it while being heckled mid-performance by his own brother. This episode tells the genuinely unbelievable life of Henry James Black: Meiji-era magician, English teacher turned stage comedian, the first Westerner officially recognised as a pro...

I'm in a handy position here: I can talk about Japan exactly AS IT IS, and nobody gets to call me racist for it. Some might call me unpatriotic instead — but you already know how I feel about that. I don't give a toss. Every year, a fresh wave of westerners fall in love with Japan from a safe distance — often thanks to those wonderfully soothing Japandi renovation videos, photo of an insta...

My mother is a geisha. She's spent a lifetime being magnificently misunderstood, and this week, so am I, as I attempt to explain her profession to an audience that mostly learned about the subject from a Hollywood film starring an American actress playing Japanese. Geisha are not prostitutes (I have absolutely nothing against prostitution. I am merely trying to tell it as it is). They never we...

Exactly sixty years ago today, four lads from Liverpool walked onto a stage and played their final two shows of the Japan tour at the Nippon Budokan. They only played for half an hour. Then they left Japan the next day.  Japan has never quite recovered since, and the evidence is in every classroom of every Japanese school. The Beatles visited Japan only once. They were the first music act ever to...

The World Cup is in full swing, which means the world's most polite people are currently screaming at television sets over a man falling over in the correct way.  I thought I might take this as an opportunity to ask an uncomfortable question: what if patriotism isn't a corruption of human nature, but an expression of it — and what if the same instinct that makes football exciting and fun is the on...

Sir David Attenborough just turned 100, which means two things: 1 - he remains a global treasure, and 2 - it’s finally time I confess that, in the 1990s, I was his Japanese voice. Yes. Really. No. I don’t sound quite like him (in Japanese). And yes — the BBC was absolutely desperate. In Episode 11 of Post‑Whatever, I explore how a young, sleep‑deprived translator at the BBC accidentally became the...

The US government ranked every language in the world in five categories - by how much learning time it requires for an American diplomat to become fluent. Japanese didn't make it to any of these categories. In fact, it found itself in a unique category on its own - above all the languages that exist.  Does that mean Japanese is the single most difficult and/or complex language in the world? In Epi...

Every week, somewhere in the world, a well-meaning Western chef reaches for silken tofu and tamari soy sauce and applies them to everything with the quiet confidence of someone who has done absolutely no research. This episode is for them. And for you. In Episode 9 of Post-Whatever, Ken demystifies two of the most misunderstood ingredients in your Japanese pantry: tamari soy sauce and silken tofu....

The Doomsday Clock stands at 85 seconds to midnight. We just moved it forward by 3 seconds. As a species, we are clearly committed. In Episode 8 of Post-Whatever, Ken Nishikawa asks a straightforward question: would you kamikaze? This week's episode debunks the myth of patriotism — not with a rant (well, a little bit), but with history, linguistics, and some quietly uncomfortable facts that se...

Japan never really did “happy” love songs - traditionally, at least. Here's why — and why that's more interesting than it sounds. In this episode of Post-Whatever, Ken Nishikawa traces the surprisingly dark — and occasionally hilarious — history of Japanese popular music, from 19th-century geisha ballads to City Pop to modern J-Pop, and asks what it all reveals about how Japanese culture h...

A visit to YBA & Beyond — British Art in the '90s from the Tate Collection at the National Art Centre Tokyo recently stopped me in my tracks. It was all je ne sais quoi then, Now it's a period piece. Which, of course, is exactly what "contemporary" art eventually becomes — the clue was always in the name. That visit became the seed of Episode 6. The 1990s began with the end o...

In 1925, a young elite American journalist named Burton Crane arrived in Yokohama as a financial correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. This was, by any reasonable measure, a respectable career trajectory. By 1931, he was Tokyo's biggest pop star. Nobody planned this. Least of all Burton Crane. Episode 5 of Post-Whatever “Sake of the Song: The Wall Street Journal Cor...

Being vegetarian in Japan is a bit like being a pacifist at a sword convention. Technically possible. Occasionally uncomfortable. And people keep offering you things you didn't ask for. In this episode of Post-Whatever, Ken Nishikawa — broadcaster, DJ, and almost lifelong vegetarian — navigates the surprising, baffling, and occasionally magnificent world of plant-based eating in Tokyo. From th...

In this episode, Ken Nishikawa introduce to the world Café Bonnet — a tiny, resolutely unreconstructed junkissa tucked down a side alley in the seaside resort town of Atami — and tells the story of its remarkable owner, Hiroshi Masuda, who introduced American hamburger to Japan and served to Japanese literary giants two decades before McDonald's knew Japan existed. Along the way: Yukio Mishima...

Why is it almost always western man, Japanese woman — and the other way round is comparatively few? And why has it been that way since at least 1600? In this episode, Ken Nishikawa voluntarily marches into the minefield of race to examine the John & Yoko Phenomenon — the curious and persistent pattern of western men and Japanese women finding and gravitating towards each other across centuries...

If you think your soul is worth no more than ¥11,000 (69USD) like I do, then press play. Free money. Well — almost. It’s complicated. It’s Japan. In this inaugural episode of Post-Whatever, Ken Nishikawa guides you through the surprisingly rewarding ordeal of claiming ¥11,000 from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government — via a My Number Card, two apps, and what remains of your soul and dignity. Along t...