Understanding Humour in Japan (review)

Understanding Humour in Japan may seem like a straightforward or even bland title at first glance, but it raises a number of questions. One of them can be answered in short order: "in Japan" refers to the humor that is to be understood, rather than to the place where the understanding is being done. Others linger. The title seems to presuppose that there is some entity that we can call Japanese humor, that it can be understood, and that this book will show us how to do it. But is humor in Japan an object that can somehow be understood in toto? And if it is, just what would "understanding" it mean? Is there some systematic way to understand it? If there is one, can reading this book move you from a state of nonunderstanding to understanding? And perhaps most important of all for some readers, will it help you to get some, or many, examples of Japanese humor that you would not otherwise have?

The belief that nations or cultures may possess their own unique, or at least distinctive, styles of humor is a familiar one. English humor, we have been told, tends to be good-natured, genial, and forgiving of human foibles; Berliners have a predilection for a dark and mordant gallows humor. And Japanese humor? Some observers, homegrown and otherwise, have suggested that it is not there at all. Both may have their own reasons: any culture has its share of spoilsports, and outsiders may mistake their inability to find it for proof that it does not exist. But even those who condemn mirth as a matter of principle, or have never been to Japan, should be ready to acknowledge that humor seems to appear in some form in all cultures, even if not in every individual—not for nothing have we been called homo ludens. There is no reason to expect Japan to be an exception, and, as the book demonstrates plainly enough, it is not.

As to whether there really is a distinctive Japanese strain of humor to be understood, the title seems to be hedging its bets: "humor in Japan" might simply be whatever humor happens to be located there, no more distinctive than Japanese coughing. And many examples of Japanese humor do seem to be very much like any other kind, unless one accepts the premise that the mere fact of their existence in Japan makes them distinctive by definition. But Japanese humor does boast some distinctive forms, and exploring these is the approach that most of the contributors to this book have adopted, with the coverage ranging from the more celebrated ones (kyōgen, rakugo, manzai), through some less familiar categories such as Osaka humor, newspaper humor, and ritualized laughter in traditional local festivals.

For each category, typical subject matter, tone, and presentation style are discussed in a way that is more often descriptive or ethnographic than critical or theoretical, although some important ideas do recur frequently enough to at least suggest the possible existence of a unifying principle or key to understanding. One of these is the importance of what the book calls "containers of time or location," carefully delineated and socially sanctioned contexts within which humorous expression is accepted or even expected. Although a similar argument might be made for other cultures, in Japan the boundaries do appear to be conspicuously narrow and clearly defined, at least in comparison to a culture like that of the United States. The rules governing Japanese social relationships, including the common taboo on invidious discourse, also play a crucial role in shaping the forms of humorous expression; as Hiroshi Inoue points out in his chapter on humor in Japanese newspapers, the satirical commentaries on political or social developments provided by readers would be a good deal less sharp without the shield of anonymity provided by the customary use of pen names; the same applies in the case of senryū.

A more in-depth, critically sophisticated exploration of these principles and the social...