Postby emccormick » August 31st, 2008 9:56 pm
I have said for years that Japan is the Land of the Rising Pun.
Word play is very common in Japanese. The lack of phonemes in Japanese makes for many homonyms, and a ton of sound alike words. This situation lends itself to word plays, and puns.
In manzai Japanese humor, they make the most of this linguistic trend. And a manzai like pair of characters, the boke and the tsukkomi, are common in many TV shows. Even if they are not the main characters, they are regularly shown somewhere.
Nakama Yukie, a popular Japanese actress, can be compared with Lucile Ball. She is able to present excellent physical comedy that transcends language barriers, and is still very skilled with verbal presentation, situational comedy, and some other comedic forms.
In "Joshi Deka!" she brings humor to a more serious role. It turns a serious police drama into a drama comedy, much in the same way that the interplay between Mel Gibson and Danny Glover changes the "Leathal Weapon" movies from action to action comedy.
I would say that "Joshi Deka!" is one of the least comedy roles I have seen Nakama Yukie in, but it still has some very funny moments.
In "Erai Tokoro ni Totsuide Shimatta!" she plays a daughter in law who is ready to battle with her new family. Instead she is accepted in, and introduced to the familie's somewhat obscure customs. This creates situational comedy that is easily understood. There is also much verbal comedy, and the rest of the cast is not at all slack, making for something quite humorous.
One of the running jokes is how un-funny one character is. He constantly goes for lame puns.
So the pun is a high art form in Japan, and when done poorly, it can make you the joke more than the joke itself. This makes humor very hard for non-natives.
These things are hard to understand without good translation. The colloquialisms, dialects, and other unique linguistic aspects can even be confusing to Japanese. This makes it all the much more difficult for non-Japanese to understand.
I still think that Japanese humor is well worth trying to understand. They certainly have some funny stuff. But do not expect to be telling many jokes soon.
