Laughing Japan

You Tube :D

Some people make English subtitles. I loved this comedy act by comedian Jinnai before, and because now you can watch it with subtitles I really recommend it:

Zombie Video Game

Amagasaki Comedy Prize

Maybe I am the one who is most suprised about this, but my manzai-duo "Altbayern" won the first prize at the Amagasaki Comedy Competition. Although this competition is not very big it is quite well known within the comedy scene since it has been the stepping stone for many famous comedians for example female stand-up-comedian start Tomochika. We beat 255 competitors and got the prize, which allows us to have a weekly radio show on FM Amagasaki (which is not the BBC of course...).

My partner Daisuke and I acted a scene in which I read a letter written to my parents telling them about my life in Japan, how I put the broccoli into my bicycle when the saddle was stolen, how my (fictive!) girlfriend is only going out with me because of my (fictive!) money and how I destroy the beautiful Japanese paper walls in my room when doing penalty shoots with my German friend with whom I attended the football club before.

At the beginning I had to sing an altered version of the Doraemon-Song, which is well known to every Japanese. And... being not Japanese, I got stuck. We somehow managed to navigate out of this, but to be honest, I thought the prize is gone because of that. After that we enjoyed the shows of the other 15 single persons or duos who had been able to reach the finals. All people I talked to were very friendly and I would love to invite them all as guests to our radio show very soon.

The second prize went to "Onigiri", a boy and a girl from a local primary school doing manzai. The third prize went to "Wataru with Okan", a very unique duo of young man and his mum. I had known Wataru with Okan before, since they had appeared on the bonus-dvd of the famous M1-Grandprix Manzai competition.

A radio show? To be honest I am not sure yet what to do with a radio show, but I hope I can use it as a good chance to make new experiences, meet new people, widen my network etc.

A Punished Comedian

Show business is hard. There must be a lot of pressure on Japanese comedians. There are so many competitors and so many young people who are after your job. So sometimes even a veteran comedian does something he should not do and get into trouble. That has happened to the comedian Ken (47), member of the famous comedy-duo Tommys.

During a TV-show production in China Ken lowered his pants and showed his naked bottom into the camera. He repeated the same action at two other locations. Obviously the director and the stuff of the show did not mind at all during that time, but later when it became obvious that the people who saw it were not amused it was all said to be Ken's improvisation and only his fault.

The TV station decided to cancel the sheduled broadcast of the show. Ken was punished with an unlimited "arrest", meaning that he will not appear on stage or TV for some time, while his partner Masa will go on appearing on TV shows on his own. Ken also did a public apologize on a press conference where he declared that he will never expose his bottom again and that he was a big idiot doing so. As usual for Japanese apologise-press-conferences Ken bowed deeply and expressed his regrets for how much he has put everyone into trouble.

I like Ken. I like Tommys. Their humor is sometimes a bit insinuating, but intelligent, unique and funny. They can make people laugh with their funny ideas without exposing any part of their body. It is hard for me to imagine that it was only Ken's idea. At least nobody stopped him doing that during the shootings and maybe even encouraged him to do it a second and third time. That could be part of the problem I mentioned at the beginning, that the pressure on comedian to do something funny and something new all the time may be very hard, even for the veteran comedians.

Although Ken is now under arrest for some times before he can appear on stage again, I am sure his fans are not really angry with him and everybody will forgive him very soon. For me, I am looking forward to seeing Tommys Ken and Masa again very soon.

Happy New Year: Fuku Warai

New Year is the most important festival in Japan. Most people get a few days off and visit their parents and families, similar to Christmas in western countries. There are many customs related to new year in Japan: Visitin a shrine to pray for a happy year, taking care of the first dream of the year, writing new years cards, eating special kind of food - and: Laugh a lot to make old worries go away and to make the new year become a happy one - an idea of happiness I admire very much. When you turn on the TV during the first week of the year you will find many many comedy shows on every channel. If you should try to watch them all it is not unlikely that you kill yourself laughing in the end (which would probably not make a happy year for the ones you love, so be careful!). I will introduce some of the comedy programmes around new year later to you, but today I want to introduce an old custom to you which is also related to laughing: A game called "Fuku Warai".

Fuku Warai is similar to the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey-game known in some western countires. In Fuku Warai the blindfolded player is not putting a tail to an animal but eyes, nose, mouth and ears to a human face. The strange results you might get while enjoying the games with people you like will probably lead to big laughter. And that is what the game is all about: The word Fuku Warai could be translated as "Laughing for Good Luck" - again laughter is something like a good charm for good fortune.

Although the game had been played for centuries, it lacks popularity nowadays - probably because of the possibilities to have a big laugh watching TV. But now, you can play Fuku Warai on the internet! I recommend you should give it a try and laugh about the funny faces you produce. It becomes even more fun if you try closing your eyes while doing it. I am sure the laughter will bring you good luck for 2007: Click here to play Virtual Fuku Warai.

Happy New Year!

Kimi Koishi

I have met Kimi Koishi!

Kimi Koishi is the younger brother of the brothers "Yumeji Itoshi and Kimi Koishi", whose Manzai I analyzed in my master thesis. After my thesis had been turned into a book, the manager of Kimi Koishi invited me to hand over a book to Kimi Koishi myself. I was very excited to meet him - he can be regarded as the greates living manzai-comedian, who has been performng for more than 50 years and is still very active, even after Yumeji Itoshi has passed away two years ago.

Kimi Koishi was very warm-hearted and friendly. He welcomed me, we chatted a little bit about how difficult it can be to understand foreign humor. He seemed to be really happy to be on the cover of a book that some people in Germany might even read. After exchanging a few sentences with him I had forgotten how nervous I had been before and just enjoyed his aura. Meeting him after I spent almost two years watching him on DVD almost every day was a very special occasion for me.

After meeting him I was invited to sit in the audience for the recording of a TV-show which features many kind of old performing arts - not only comic ones. Kimi Koishi joined the show as some kind of expert, who commented on some of the performances. Being over 80 years old, he still seemed to be one of the freshest persons on the stage.

Kansai University "Waraiko", Dec 3rd

On december 3rd Kansai University held its first "Waraiko", a public laughter-research-symposium which is planned to be held every year in the future. The Waraiko is part of the project by sociologist Professor Yohji Kimura to make Kansai University a center of interdisciplinary study of the phenomen "laughter".

The panelists were mainly those people who took part in Professor Kimura's seminar before. At the beginning Inoue Hiroshi, the president of the Japan Society for Laughter and Humor Studies, introduced the about 100 visitors to the original "Waraiko", a ceremony which is held every december 3rd in Yamaguchi prefecture and in which the members pass from the old year by giving a big laugh three times - if someone's laugh is not big enough the master of the ceremony will order him to repeat his laughter until it is big enough.

The waraiko was happy to welcome Shimada Yoshichi as a special guest. Shimada Yoshichi became famous as a manzai-comedian in the 80s and has been a succesful writer and creator of the book-series "The gabai granny" which was recently adopted into a movie which was highly acclaimed at international film festivals like Shanghai or the Berlin Asia-Pacific Film Festival. Since the "gabai granny" masters troubles in life by confronting them with her unique kind of humor, Professor Kimura choosed it as a "must-read" for his students. Mr Shimada gave a very entertaining lecture about how his memories of his granmother turned into this bestseller. I will introduce more about gabai granny later here in "Laughter Japan".

After the lunch-break two medical lectures put my own Japanese abilities to a hard test. Dr. Kimata explained the positive effect of laughter for atopy-patients, while Mr Nozawa of Tsukuba-University introduced his neurological research about the brain-processes involved with laughter. Both lecutres in combination were very impressing and illustrated how meaningful laughter can be for medical treatments and how important research can be.

In the evening, our Waraiko turned into a ceremony as well. After Professor Sekiya, an expert on Kyogen (a comic version of the famou Noh-Theater) held his lecture, we started a little play in which the students and me turned into Japanese gods and acted under the direction of Professor Sekiya. We played a little episode from old Japanese legends: The sun-goddes has retreated into a cave, it becomes dark and cold on earth. The other gods start to shout, dance, laughter and sing (and in the originally story one goddess starts to strip too - unfortunately nobody stripped today ;) ). The sun-goddess is wondering what is going on and leaves her cave again. With the sun back on earth, the laughter becomes even bigger. And here, the audience was asked to join our laughter. For someone who was not involved the scene might have been a little bit scary: About 100 peoples wildly laughing, a sun-goddess wearing an old costume and a Noh-mask and me guiding the goddess around the room. For the people involved it was a very amusing experience.

For me, the Waraiko was a chance to present my just published book on Japanese stand-up-comedy "Manzai" to the audience and to meet a few new people who research in similar fields or whose methods are interesting for my own research as well. I also enjoyed spending time with the many cheerful students who voluntary came to school on sunday to make the waraiko a success.

At the little party after the lectures, we had time for a little chat and say cheers "Kampai" with sweet "Big-Laughter-Sake", brought by Professor Kimura from his little mountain-village.

M1-Grandprix 2nd round

Some weeks ago my partner and me succeeded in passing the 1st round of the  "M1-Grandprix", a big competition for manzai (duo-stand-up-comedy). Although we had prepared very well for the 2nd round, we were not able to pass and go on to 3rd round. My partner is a bit depressed about this, but for me even reaching the 2nd round was like a big miracle.

Both times we choosed a topic in which I complain about having lost my job. Then we played an episode of how I lost my job. The first time I was a stupid shop assistent who gave the customer a hard time. The second time I was a doctor, who did not cure the patient's illness but made him feel even worse. Maybe the doctor-sktech was a bit too complicated? On the other hand, in the 2nd round all the big-shots, the famous comedians join the competition, so for most of the amateurs 2nd round is the final stop anyway. So we have been able to taste both sides of being a comedian - success and failure.

The 2nd round took place in "Yoshimoto Base", a small but very popular theater for young comedians. Although I guess taking photos there was not allowed, I took a photo of all the hopeful comedians who waited for their turns to go on stage. Take a good look. Maybe one of them will be famous and succesful soon? :)

A new Stage for Comedy

Osaka has a new comedy-theater specialised on Rakugo, the classical art of comic storytelling: On September 15th the "Tenma-Tenjin Hanjotei" opened it doors for the public. While rakugo has a long history of more than 300 years, Osaka did not have a regular performance hall for rakugo for about 60 years. The impressing thing about the "Hanjotei" is that it was built only using donations from the public. Over the last years the Kamigata Rakugo Society led by famous rakugo-comedian and TV-star Sanshi Katsura put a lot of effort in it to make their dream of an exclusive rakugo-space come true. On the opening day, people could see Sanshi Katsura spreading tears on stage, deeply moved by the success. For him and his collegues the opening of the Hanjotei lets a dream become true.
During the first weeks many visitors came to see the performance at Hanjotei. I also enjoyed a rakugo-evening last week. Some people are worried whether the public interest in a classical art will remain as high as it is now and that Hanjotei might have much less visitors in the future. But for the momet it is a wonderful place to enjoy classical Japanese comedy.

Japanese Comedians: Sayaka Aoki

Today I want to introduce my favourite Japanese female comedian to you: Sayaka Aoki. While most female TV-talents in Japan are VERY young and VERY slim, Aoki is different on the first sight, being 33 years old and having a "normal" appearance. I first got to know her as a regular on the comedy-series "Warau Inu no Taiyou" (The Laughing Dog's Sun). In the sketches of these show she often performed scary or ugly women. She also often appeared with one-man-acts on other TV-shows and can now be seen on variety shows several times a week.

One of he ways of being funny is to be quite the opposite of the cute and young female TV-talents which appear on TV. As a result to that Aoki is often refered to as being "ugly", an image which she uses herself very often to gain laughter. When she gets angry, she can become really scary.

Lately I have been seing her in the rhole of the "idol hunter", in which she challenges popular and beautiful models or singers to a sport competition, for example to swimming a race.  The winner is allowed to throw a cake into the face of the loser. When Aoki gets the chance to do that she is always savouring the moment of triumph and loves to make the beautiful loser feel scared and bad.

Podcasting Rakugo

Apart from being able to buy music online, the software iTunes offers "Podcasts", sound or video files which can be put online by everyone and normally downloaded for free. Often podcasts are being kept update on a regular base and are downloaded to your computer automatically once you subscribe to it, making them very similar to a regular radio- or tv-show.

Japan has always been well known for being able to adopt to new ideas and new techniques, even to the benefit of the Japanese traditions. A good example of this is the Rakugo-Podcast I found one iTunes these days. Young rakugo-artists are offered the possibility to present their traditional art of comic story telling to a wide audience using the moder technique of podcasting. Because it is free, it is very likely that even people who are not especially interested in rakugo might give it a try - and find out that they like this kind of traditional entertainment. The podcast seems to be financed by a big internet provider - its advertisement appears on the wall behind the artist. That fact might put off real rakugo-fans, who are not only enjoying the story-telling itself but also the atmosphere of the small yose-theaters where rakugo is performed.

For me, this podcast has become a nice way of studying more about rakugo. I get to know more rakugo-stories and I can get an impression how the young artists perform rakugo compared to famous masters which appear on TV or DVD.