Understanding Humor in Japan

Humor in Life and Letters

by Jessica Milner Davis (Contributor)

Japanese conventions about comedy and laughter are largely unanalyzed. For many students of Japanese culture and visitors to Japan, Japanese humor seems obscure, incomprehensible, paradoxical, and even nonexistent. By bringing together scholarly insights and original research by both Japanese and non-Japanese experts, Jessica Milner Davis bridges the differences between humor in Japan and the West and examines the entire spectrum of Japanese humor, from ancient traditions and surviving rituals of laughter to norms of joke-telling in ordinary conversation in Japan and America.

For anyone interested in Japan, Japanese culture, and humor studies, Understanding Humor in Japan is an important teaching tool. It provides accessible, illustrative examples of humor in both Japanese and English with explanations of their meaning and cultural significance. Scholarly yet readable, these essays offer intelligent discussion on such topics as the Japanese delight in wordplay, the comic content of Japanese newspapers, the role of film and television in developing Japanese stand-up comedy, and formal censorship and its impact on humorous writing and self-expression in Japan. Understanding Humor in Japan breaks new ground in the study of humor and sheds light on much that is taken for granted about the role of laughter in civilized societies.

Genres: Humor, History, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published March 1, 2006

Reviews

[Tinkerreise · Rating 5 out of 5]

In studying JP translation, I consistently find it productive to circle around the actual topic of translation, trying to find the context that helps make sense of the worlds that we're translating. Texts that take up translation directly can be interesting, but it's not uncommon that they tend to gravitate towards the reductive "the translation is different from the source text," or the specific, far to specific. To read something like this instead feels oh so enriching.

Humor is such an important topic. The way we laugh can tell a great deal about a society, and the chapters in this book felt like a solid guide in the project of, maybe, becoming a little less ignorant about the world. The history of manzai was extremely useful personally, to me and my writing, and the texts about satire, the sk "Japanese laugh," and Osaka were very interesting. Despite having been immersed in Japanese for a while now, it wasn't really until this book that it really clicked why kansaiben is considered abnormally rich with humour... Mentioning the samurai approach to trade was all that was needed for my proverbial coin to drop. The text on kakekotoba was interesting too, and my notebooks have gotten irreversibly cluttered with poetry snippets.

I liked it. Rich with relevance.