# 2023年9月2日放送 朝井リョウと加藤千恵のオールナイトニッポン0

- Show: 朝井リョウと加藤千恵のオールナイトニッポン
- Published: 2025-11-15
- Canonical: https://podc.club/en/episode/1852955890_54d99d4c97d6.html
- Audio: https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/67122501-9b17-4d77-84bd-a93d00dc791e/b16b6f46-7419-420d-9c10-b395006d31b1/10b21287-7cb0-4b95-93b4-b39500919fbc/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=0f95aa3b-39e8-4f0d-bdd8-b395006d384e
- Source: Edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. Not an official summary.

On September 2, 2023, Asai Ryo (朝井リョウ) and Kato Chie (加藤千恵) brought back their All Night Nippon 0 for one night only — the show's first return in eleven months. The 30-minute special covered a birthday party with Wakabayashi (Audrey) and DJ Matsunaga, a listener card segment inspired by novelist Nishi Kanako's surgery experience, and the pair's astonishment at meeting Alco & Peace's Hirako's wife, Mayumi-san, at a cherry-blossom party.

## What this episode answers

### What happened between Kato Chie and the staff over the comeback announcement text?

Kato wrote a comeback announcement she considered 'the only possible wording' as a poet, but staff member Tomiyama-san rejected it three times via group chat because it contained a specific organisation name; after three rounds of gentle push-back, Kato revised it.

### What stories came out of the birthday gathering with Wakabayashi and DJ Matsunaga?

Wakabayashi brought a deep-indigo 'world's softest towel' chosen to match the cover of Asai's book Seiyoku, plus sushi from a personal restaurant spun off from a chain — a perfectly considerate choice; DJ Matsunaga brought quince candy and dandelion tea and was teased for bringing 'grandpa gifts.' On a separate occasion, Kato visited Matsunaga on his birthday and found him wearing a neck compress — he had been doing somersaults alone in his living room waiting for Asai to arrive and had hurt himself.

### How did the card segment theme 'What you'd blurt out the moment before going under general anaesthesia' come about?

The theme grew from a story Asai and Kato heard when they visited novelist Nishi Kanako in hospital: while undergoing surgery in Japan after years in Canada, she involuntarily said 'Uchi-naa って安心するわー (it feels so safe here)' just before losing consciousness under general anaesthesia, and only learned about it afterward from her doctor.

### What did Asai and Kato each say they would blurt out?

Asai said 'depachika (department-store basement food hall)' — he considers browsing unfamiliar deli items there the peak emotional experience of his life, and even uses invitations to people's homes as pretexts to visit one. Kato said 'Mura-bito desu (I'm a villager)' — she still cannot shake regret over a werewolf game years ago in which she played the fortune-teller role and led the whole village to its doom.

### Who left the biggest impression on Kato at Nishi Kanako's cherry-blossom party, and why?

Kato was most struck by Hirako's wife Mayumi-san, whom she called 'beyond human — in the realm of a yokai,' praising the way Mayumi-san arrived as the biggest outsider in a room full of writers and entertainers yet moved most naturally and freely, putting everyone at ease without any effort.

## Article

## Eleven Months Later — and the Three-Round Rejection of the Comeback Text

Asai Ryo and Kato Chie's All Night Nippon ran as a regular programme from April 2015 to March 2016, returned for one night in October 2022 after six and a half years, and came back again on September 2, 2023 — eleven months after that second revival.

The road back was bumpy before the broadcast even began. Kato, who also works as a poet and haiku writer, drafted the official comeback announcement with what she felt was the only possible wording: a text built around a specific proper noun — the name of a poetry organisation — chosen for the same reason haiku and tanka poets pack meaning into proper nouns when every character counts. Staff member Tomiyama-san sent it back through the group chat three times. Each refusal was gently worded — 'Could we check this?' and 'This might be a little difficult' — but firm: the organisation name was the problem. After three exchanges, Kato revised the text. Asai compared Tomiyama's soft persistence to a table tennis player who just keeps returning the ball without ever retiring.

There was also a moment of shared embarrassment: at a pre-broadcast meeting, the two were told their previous revival had ranked highly on radiko listening figures. They assumed this meant across all programmes and celebrated accordingly — only to learn it was a ranking within the Saturday All Night Nippon 0 category.

## Birthday Stories: Wakabayashi, DJ Matsunaga, and Solo Somersaults

Around Asai's birthday on May 31, both Wakabayashi (Audrey) and DJ Matsunaga came to his home. When Wakabayashi arrived carrying a department-store bag, Asai noticed but played it cool and carried it to the room himself without peeking. At the end of the evening Wakabayashi handed over a deep-indigo towel — billed as the world's softest — explaining he had chosen the colour to match the cover of Asai's book Seiyoku (性欲). Asai was moved: 'I didn't know someone would put that kind of thought into a present.' The sushi Wakabayashi brought was equally considered: from a small personal restaurant that had split off from a national chain — high quality without being intimidating. DJ Matsunaga, by contrast, arrived with quince candy and dandelion tea, prompting the two to ask whether they had accidentally invited someone's grandfather.

The more astonishing story came later. When Kato went to Matsunaga's apartment on his birthday with a cake, she found the living room's low table pushed to one side, an open space in the middle of the floor, and Matsunaga with a compress on his neck. His explanation: he had been doing somersaults by himself — repeatedly — while waiting for Asai to arrive, and had strained his neck. The image of Matsunaga alone, rolling across his own living room in anticipation, left both Asai and Kato in tears of laughter.

## The Card Theme: 'What Would You Blurt Out Seconds Before Going Under?'

The listener-card segment theme for the night — 'Assuming you were about to receive general anaesthesia right now, what would you say in the moment before you lost consciousness?' — came directly from a real incident involving novelist Nishi Kanako, author of Kumo wo Sagasu (雲を探す, Kawade Shobo).

Nishi had been diagnosed with breast cancer while living in Canada and navigated surgery and post-operative self-management in English within a healthcare system very different from Japan's. When she later had a separate operation back home in Japan, the attentive, thorough hospitalisation was such a relief that just before the anaesthesia took hold she apparently said aloud, 'Uchi-naa って安心するわー — it feels so safe here.' She had no memory of saying it and only found out from her doctor afterward. When Asai and Kato visited her and heard the story, they laughed and immediately started wondering what they themselves would say.

Asai's answer: 'depachika.' The basement food halls of department stores are where he feels the most intense emotion in his life. He has become conscious that he uses other people's homes as excuses to visit them, not the other way around. 'I realised at 34 that this might be what defines me, and I was pretty devastated,' he said.

Kato's answer: 'Mura-bito desu — I'm a villager.' Years ago she became absorbed in the social deduction game Jinro (werewolf). In one game she was dealt the fortune-teller role but still managed to send the entire village to its doom. She has never stopped replaying the one move she could have made differently. The first listener card of the night, from someone with the card name Shio-nameda, read simply: 'I wonder if anything fun is going to happen.' They had no hobbies and the phrase came out of their mouth without thinking. 'If someone keeps saying that to themselves as they get older, it's heartbreaking,' the two agreed.

## The Cherry-Blossom Party: Paternal Energy and a 'Yokai' of Sociability

For the first cherry-blossom party at Nishi Kanako's home in several years, Asai invited Hirako (平子) from the comedy duo Alco & Peace (アルコアンドピース), who came with his wife Mayumi-san.

Kato said that the moment Hirako opened the door, his large frame and low voice triggered an almost involuntary impulse to collapse into his arms — a feeling she identified as 'paternal energy' she had not encountered since leaving her family home. 'Japan is short on that kind of paternal presence,' she concluded.

Mayumi-san drew an entirely different kind of praise. She arrived as the biggest outsider in a room of writers and people from the entertainment world, all strangers, yet she was the most relaxed, the most clearly enjoying herself, and the one who kept the room moving — without making anyone else feel they had to work harder. Kato, who considers herself relatively talkative at gatherings of writers, said Mayumi-san was in a completely different league: 'She has transcended being human. She's in the territory of a yokai.'

## Takeaways

- Kato Chie's poet's instinct to choose an 'unmovable word' collided head-on with broadcast constraints when staff rejected her comeback announcement three times over a specific organisation name — a small but sharp illustration of how a writer's language values and radio's rules can clash.
- From Wakabayashi's cover-colour-matched towel to DJ Matsunaga's solo pre-birthday somersaults to Asai's confession that depachika browsing is his life's emotional peak, the birthday anecdotes and the anaesthesia segment both keep circling the same idea: trivial daily fixations and half-forgotten regrets are the clearest windows into who a person really is.
- The cherry-blossom party encounter — Hirako's paternal solidity on one hand, Mayumi-san's 'yokai-level' social grace on the other — shows the writer-circle lens at its sharpest: even a casual gathering becomes a field study in the rarest human qualities.