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

POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa · Sep 3, 2026 · 19m

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…