Laughing Japan

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.

Rakugo Stories (1): "Complimenting a Cow"

Rakugo is the classical art of humorous story telling, in which the story teller (the rakugo-ka) recites or acts the lines of the people involved in the story. There are a lot of famous rakugo stories, of which I want to introudce some here in my blog. Today I will introduce the rakugo "Complimenting a Cow", or "Ushi home" in Japanese. It is a very good example of how important puns can be for the comic of rakugo. It is also interesting to learn about the Japanese ideal of beauty when it comes to cows.

A father decides to send his son Yotaro to congratulate his uncle to congratulate him on the completion of his new house. But Yotaro has difficulties in remembering the correct set phrases, which are important on such occasions and wich his father tries to teach him. Instead of using the correct phrases, he mixes up some words with words of a similar sound in Japanese, turning the sentence into a total nonsense. For example Instead of saying "The ceiling of your new house is build using delicately patterned wood from Satsuma (satsuma no uzura moki)." he keeps saying "The ceiling of your new house is build using sweet potatoes (satsumaimo no uzura mame)." Instead of pointing out hat the walls are made of cypress-wood (hinoki), he praises it as fart-wood (henki). When he is supposed to praise the fine "bingo"-style of the tatami mats, he calls them "binbo" - which means cheap and worn out.

After some time the father decides to write down the set phrases on a piece of paper which he hands over to his son before sending him to his uncle's house. He especially admonishes him to compliment the uncle on an elegant knothole, which can be found in the kitchen and which the uncle likes very much, and on his beloved cow. When complimating on the knothole, Yotaro is supposed to give a complimenting advise to his uncle: "Attach a lucky charm from the akiba shrine on the wall next to it, so the hole in the wall will be spared from fire." When speaking of the cow, Yotaro shall point out that the horns are pointing to the sky, that the eyes are clearly watching the surrounding, that the nose is wet, that the tongue is black, that the ears are small and that the upper and lower row of teeth are in perfect disharmony - what a beautiful cow.

Yotaro leaves for the house. Peeping at his piece of paper, he somehow manages to compliment the uncle on the house's walls, ceiling etc. But then, when he meets his uncle's daughters, he blurts out with the words: "Her horns are pointing in the sky, her eyes are clearly watching the surrounding, her nose is all wet, her tongue is black, her ears are small and the upper and lower teeth are in perfect disharmony." When it comes to the point that Yotaro should compliment his uncle on the cow, the cow raises her tail and splashes a warm jet of urine over Yotaro. He looks at his uncle and say: "You should attach a lucky charm from the akiba shrine on the wall next to it, so the hole in the cow will be protected from urine."

With these last words the rakugo-ka will bow and leave the stage.