POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa
Post-Whatever with Ken Nishikawa is a weekly talk show covering a wide range of topics, from music and culture to food, history, politics, and philosophy. It often touches on Japan, the West—especially Britain—and the spaces between them. The host, Ken Nishikawa, is a composer, broadcaster, DJ, film director, and occasional grumpy old man who has worked for the BBC, MTV, TBS, and J-WAVE. New episodes are released every Thursday.
Episodes
Japanoise: Hostile to Speakers, Kind to Animals
This week on Post-Whatever, a story about a country famous for tea ceremony, zen gardens and punctual trains, and the underground music scene it built to ruin all three.Japanoise is the world’s most ear-splitting export. It started in 1960 with students scraping chairs across a floor, grew through cassettes posted around the world, and ended up in tiny Tokyo venues where melody, harmony and rhythm
The Poet Billionaire: Money for Art’s Sake
This week on Post-Whatever, a story about the only billionaire I know of who spent his money on poetry, performance art and putting Jackson Pollock next to the trousers.In 1987, the richest man on earth was Japanese, and so were five of the other top ten. His half-brother, Seiji Tsutsumi, was a department-store tycoon who wrote award-winning poetry under a pen name, turned a part of his department
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,
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-Sa
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, shamel
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 cla
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 lock
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
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 J
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 nucle
The First Blue-Eyed Comedian in Japan — the Tragicomical Story of the Original Kairakutei Black
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 prof
Japan: The Promised Land? A (Very) Rough Guide
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 instag
So, What the Hell Is a Geisha, Anyway?
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 wer
It Was 60 Years Ago Today — The Beatles Conquered Japan
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 pl
How to Enjoy Your Toxic Patriotism — A Field Guide to Your Inner Hitler
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 one
The voice of David Attenborough - Planet Trans
Sir David Attenborough just turned 100, which means two things:1 - he remains a global treasure, and2 - 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 Japan
The Most Difficult Language in the World - Don't Panic!
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 Episo
Silken Tofu and Tamari Soy Sauce - two most misunderstood Japanese food items
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. B
Would you Kamikaze? - Debunking the myth of patriotism
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 sev
The Saddest (and Funniest) Hit Parade — A Brief History of J-Pop
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 ha
When London Was Cool and Tokyo Was Rich —Boom, Britpop and the Bubble of the '90s
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 of
Sake of the Song: The Wall Street Journal Correspondent Who Became Tokyo's First Pop Star
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 Corres
Vegetarian Life in Tokyo (life can be cruel)
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 the
The Man Who Taught Mishima How to Swim (and the story of the second-oldest hamburger in Japan)
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&
The John & Yoko Phenomenon
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,
Tokyo will pay you ¥11,000, no catch! (well, almost...)
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 the
