Tag: Japan
After six months with only a handful of posts, this blog is back, and what better way to restart than with something sublimely silly: Japanese Synchronized Walking!
My October series honoring the 72nd birthday of the late, great “itinerant fool” Ken Feit included a post on his incredible travel journals, reproduced in the form of three PDFs. At the time I mentioned that I was still missing the holy grail letter, the one about his most ambitious trip, a seven-month, around-the-world journey that took him and San Francisco street juggler Ray Jason from the U.S. to England, Scotland, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Russia, Japan (via the trans-Siberian Express), Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia (including Bali), China, Australia, New Zealand, and French Polynesia. Phew!
Last post’s Japanese photo prank reminded me of some other funny videos from the land of kyogen and kabuki that I wanted to share with you. I thought this would be a quick post, but as I started to follow links, instead of hitting a dead end, I stumbled upon a treasure trove of Japanese visual humor. Eventually I realized that I wasn’t looking at isolated performers but at a broader cultural phenomenon: contestants on Japanase television talent shows concocting elaborate sight gags. The work is quite creative and the results often hilarious.
I was in Tokyo for 3½ days but spent too much of it figuring out how to get home in the middle of a hurricane. So no physical comedy report, but here’s a clever sight gag I think you’ll enjoy.
You’ve probably already seen most of the mime-y shtick these guys do, but their high energy and inspired silliness make it fresh and funny. Thanks to Jeff Seal for the link.
“Live from Paris” last April, that is, where I was already undercover on the Linder and Etaix capers when I got a coded message from one Michael Evans, an operative unknown to me but apparently a go-between for a character from the 70s who at that time went by the unassuming name of Lou Campbell. I was in Paris, I had nothing better to do (hah!), and before I could say fromage I’d been given the assignment to track down legendary Japanese pantomimist Mamako Yoneyama, rumored to be hiding out in that City of Light Mimes. Evans (if that’s his real name) had first met Yoneyama — code name Mamako— at the 1974 International Mime Festival at Viterbo College in Lacrosse, Wisconsin, organized by yet another “Lou Campbell.” Or was he in fact the same person?? Evans’ rambling confession about that festival — an event whose foreign ideas about movement theatre forever corrupted the minds of a whole generation of impressionable Americans in tights —has finally been released thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, and now the general public can view it here, including incriminating sketches and notes such as these:
We all know how hard it can be for a Hollywood star to make ends meet these days, what with the economy and all, which is why so many famous actors and directors have to choose between waiting tables and doing Japanese commercials. These commercials are so demanding that only a select few choose to go this route. Thanks to guest poster Jonathan Lyons for alerting me to a practice that recalls the slave trade of centuries past.
This one has recently surfaced on Facebook and YouTube, but probably most of you haven’t seen it yet, so let’s add it to my early film collection, complete with all the background info.
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Workshops & Other Events
My first book (1976)
My book Clowns has long been out of print, but you can borrow it for two weeks at a time from the Internet Archive. More information is available here.
My second book (2015)
Visual and verbal humor for the cognitively and artistically curious! Available here.
“A book to treasure!”
—Bill Irwin