POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa

About POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa

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.

Publisher

Ken Nishikawa

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

15 Apr 2026

Latest episode

15 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

25 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   15 Oct 2026

   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 store into a museum of contemporary art and put roughly ten billion yen of his own money into a foundation for new artists. Then Japan's bubble burst. It's the rise and fall of a great patron of the arts. Also in this episode: two brothers whose rivalry became the most expensive beef known to man, a trip to a sound installation that is improved by somebody coughing, and a joke quiz whose answer I can't say out loud without losing my family rating. 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 (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Tokyo #Podcast #Art #JapaneseHistory

2. 

   1 Oct 2026

   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 fuck 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 (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Tokyo #Podcast #OldTokyo #JapaneseHistory

3. 

   24 Sept 2026

   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 (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61574320836189) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kendajapkid/ #PostWhatever #Tokyo #Podcast #Linguistics #JapaneseHistory

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

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Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.