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Q. What animal loves everybody? A. The mule, or raba. (Rabaa is the
Japanese pronunciation of "lover")
For a long while, there was an industry in Japan called Nihonjin-ron: a
multimillion-dollar traffic in theories of the Japanese national
character.
The Japanese of the 1960's and 70's discovered to their surprise, not
only that they were prosperous, but that other people wanted to know
more about them; suddenly they were aware that they didn't have any
good explanations of what it meant to be Japanese, even amongst
themselves. Theories of the national character became immensely
popular. Everybody with a contribution to offer got a hearing: eminent
sociologists, journalists, doctors, politicians. Foreigners were especially
welcome to join in, and a good many of them did. The Japanese are
the Japanese, we were told, because (a) they have a vertical society,
(b) they were rice farmers for so many centuries, or because of (c)
their dependency relations or (d) their management system or (e)
their climate, or because (f ) they learn to use chopsticks in early
childhood, or (g) their ancestors were nomadic horse drovers from
Central Asia, or (h) all of the above, (i) none of the above, or (j) any of
hundreds of other probable and improbable causes.
Curiously enough, Nihonjin-ron-ists are for the most part reluctant to
talk about Japanese humor. What makes the Japanese laugh? If
laughter is mentioned at all, it is only to say that the Japanese laugh
when they are nervous or embarrassed: "another of those gossamer
veils of reserve," writes one observer, "that partly . . . cover certain
emotional reactions." The theories seem to share a common
assumption that the inhabitants of these isles take themselves and the
world around them too seriously to have funnybones.
Which is, of course, nonsense. You don't have to spend very much
time in Japan, or with Japanese people, to notice that humor plays a
substantial part in their lives. An outsider may not always be able to
share the joke, but the Japanese certainly do laugh; what's more, they
laugh in many different ways at a wide spectrum of things, from piein-the-face buffoonery and vaudeville monologues to witty political
satires and bittersweet social comedies.
Understanding some Japanese humor is purely a language problem on
the simplest level: there are comic characters and comic situations
that, once you know roughly what's going on, are just as recognizable,
just as funny to outsiders, as they are to the Japanese themselves.
With other forms, you might need a much deeper understanding of the
language to get the point at all; a fairly large proportion of Japanese
humor is in fact verbal humor. And inevitably, there is humor that it
doesn't even help to understand: you can know exactly what's being
said and still not know why it's funny. This sort of humor is only
accessible if you can think like a Japanese -- a very difficult
requirement indeed.
As it happens, that last category is surprisingly small. For this article,
we talked to a novelist and a storyteller; we sifted jokes and satiric
poetry and comic books. From the outset, we decreed ourselves only
one principle: nothing kills a joke deader than an explanation. We
wanted material, in other words, that spoke for itself, even in
translations, and we didn't have to look very far for it. For the casual
visitor, there really isn't enough of that sort of translation around; so
we hope we've been able to add a little to the supply.
Tall Tales and Purple Cushions
When you tell funny stories for a living in Japan, you don't stand up in
front of your audience: you sit -- on a purple cushion, in formal
kimono -- and ply your trade with a fan.
The trade is called rakugo; the storyteller is a rakugo-ka. Scholars
trace the origins of rakugo back some 400 years, to a period when
Japan was cut up into feudal baronies invading, betraying and
generally making life miserable for one another. It was not wise for a
warlord to sleep too early or too well, for fear of assassins; very often
he had a retainer called an otogi-shu, whose job it was to keep his
master up, amusing him with anecdotes and stories and bits of odd
news. By the early 17th century, Japan was at peace again, under the
Tokugawa Shoguns, and the first collections of these stories began to
appear in print.
By the 1670's, the raconteur had emerged as a professional
entertainer, with a stall on a likely street corner, drawing crowds with
the stories he made up, and passing the hat. Rakugo was known then
as karukuchi, or "idle chatter." Monologues crafted in this period were
handed down from generation to generation; they're still in the
repertoire today, getting laughs from audiences that have probably
heard them 10 or 20 times already. Some 500 of these tales have
survived, but only 80 or so are actually performed. A professional
rakugo-ka will usually specialize in stories on one theme -- samurai
stories, townsman stories, dumb son stories, mother-in-law stories -and work regularly with 30 or 40 of these. He will also add to the
repertoire with stories of his own, on the lighter side of current events,
discarding them often for fresh ones.
In the 18th century, the popularity of rakugo spread from Kyoto and
Osaka east to Edo (present-day Tokyo); the eastern and western styles
of delivery have different, fiercely loyal partisans. In Osaka, they say
that Tokyo rakugo is pretentious and over-refined; in Tokyo, they
argue that Osaka storytellers sink a little too far into low comedy.
Eventually, the rakugo-ka moved indoors, to become top attractions in
the yose -- Japanese vaudeville. The first theater exclusively for
rakugo was built in Edo in 1687; yose theaters, with their wider variety
of entertainment, began to appear about 100 years later, offering
three hours or so of light comedy at admission prices virtually anyone
could afford. (In 1825, there were about 130 yose theatres in Tokyo;
today there are only four.) One of the early greats of yose vaudeville,
Sanshotei Karaku, is credited with the invention of sandai-banashi, a
rakugo tour de force in which the storyteller takes three completely
unrelated items at random from his audience, and weaves them
instantly into a comic improvisation -- preferably with a pun in the
punch line.
Over the years, rakugo developed subspecialties of all sorts: tales of
pathos, called ninjo-banashi, tales of the supernatural; satires on the
events of the day. Even so, as Japan modernized, vaudeville started
losing audiences to music hall reviews and movies. Really hard times
came in the 1930's and 1940's, when rakugo lost about half its
repertoire to official censorship. (Military governments always seem to
have very high standards of propriety.) After the war, however, the
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Q. What animal loves everybody? A. The mule, or raba. (Rabaa is the Japanese pronunciation of "lover")
Q. When humor does come out, is it something that non-Japanese can understand?
A. To tell the truth, there are plenty of times when we can't understand it ourselves.
Q. What about laughing at yourself? Foreigners often say that people here take themselves
and their problems too seriously for that kind of humor.
A. Not really. We have that tradition, too, of laughter as a way of releasing the pressure. You
find it especially in the popular literature of the Edo period, the dime-novelists of the 18th and
19th centuries would poke fun at themselves, and then use that pose to poke a little fun at the
upper classes, too: "I'm only a fool, of course, but it seems to me that our estimable leaders
have their heads on wrong about such-and-such." I suppose I fit into that tradition somewhere
myself. Then again, if you did that too much in the Edo period, you could lose your head for
it.
Q. That doesn't leave much room for political satire, does it?
A. Not much. Something like Le Canard Enchaine, the French lampoon newspaper -- you couldn't
have that in Japan.
Q. What about your own novel, Kiri-kiri-jin? Do people read it as a political satire?
A. One of the things I wanted to say in that book was that Japan has no business thinking so highly
of itself. The corporate bigshots, they really do think Japan is "Number 1." But we're just ordinary
people, after all; the electronics and automobiles and other things we're so proud of -- the basic
ideas all come from somewhere else. I think the situation in my book, the poor little village in
Tohoku not wanting to be part of Japan anymore, appealed to a lot of younger people. But there
were also lots of people who got very angry about it.
Q. That's a good sign, isn't it?
A. I suppose it is. Since the book came out, independence has been catching on, too. Nihonmatsu
Spa in Fukushima secedes from Japan for the summer: the hotels all become embassies, and so on.
There's a village in Kyushu that does the same.
Q. The people who read the book and laugh: what are they laughing about?
A. The local dialect, I think, for one thing. People put down the Tohoku country dialect, but in the
nation of Kiri-kiri that dialect is the "standard" language; suddenly everything is upside-down.
People seem to think that's funny.
Q. Doesn't a lot of Japanese humor depend on dialecton stories about country people and country
ways?
A. There's a lot of humor specific to certain places, certain ways of talking: Osaka, Kyoto, Edo (old
Tokyo). Tohoku, where I come from, hasn't contributed much to the mainstream of humor until now,
because the whole region was a sort of poor relation for so long. The different parts of Japan have
such different ways of thinking, such different kinds of humor, they might as well be different
countries. That goes for the language itself, too: in Kyoto, language is a real art form; in Tokyo,
language isn't very interesting at all -- except for what still survives from the way working people
spoke in the Edo period.
Q. One last question: if you were judging just from the comic strips and cartoon magazines, you'd
have to say that a lot of Japanese humor comes out of a real fascination for the grotesque, wouldn't
you?
A. Well, that goes back a long way, too. There's a scene in Kabuki, for example, where a character's
head is struck off and lands plonk! on the stage; that scene is played for laughs. But the comic
books just demonstrate my point that most Japanese humor is not very cerebral or intellectual. You
only really laugh at what you can understand; you have to have your head or your heart in it. The
cartoons are just a kind of violent Grand Guignol -- people laugh, but it's only belly-laughter. There's
more to comedy than that.
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Q. What animal loves everybody? A. The mule, or raba. (Rabaa is the Japanese pronunciation of "lover")
Not many of us encounter the warrior's problem, but this one has a certain modern
relevance:
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Q. What animal loves everybody? A. The mule, or raba. (Rabaa is the Japanese pronunciation of "lover")
Q. Which American group, to judge by its name, can't decide whether it has four or five
members?
A. Chicago. Shi ka go means "four or five."
Q. A young girl gets on an elevator. Does it go up or down?
A. Up. A gaaru is the Japanese pronunciation of "a girl" and agaru means "to go up."
Q. What European city is famous for its large population of twins?
A. Frankfurt. A frankfort is a soseji (sausage) and soseiji are twins.
Q. An osama is a kingu (king), but what is a naked osama?
A. A sutorikingu (streaking).
Q. What fowl lives on a hill?
A. A duck, or ahiru. A hiru is the Japanese pronunciation of "a hill."
Q. In what American state is it always morning?
A. Ohio, or ohaiyo, as in ohaiyo gozaimasu (good morning).
Q. What animal loves everybody?
A. The mule, or raba. Rabaa, you've probably already guessed, is the Japanese pronunciation
of "lover."
Q. What American state is famous for its waterworks?
A. Missouri, or mizurii. Mizu uri means "to sell water."
Q. When is a k-i-s-s only a k-s-s?
A. When it lacks love, or ai (i).
Q. What American state frowns on love affairs?
A. Georgia, or lofia. Joji iya means "love affairs are disgusting."