Latest / POST-WHATEVER with Ken Nishikawa
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…
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