Japan's Manzai & Comedy Culture

About this book

Two people, one microphone, a thousand years of laughter.

Japan's Manzai & Comedy Culture is the complete guide to 200 comedy duos, theatres and laughter traditions: the folk blessing pairs who first knocked on farmhouse doors at New Year; the Osaka revolution of the 1930s, when two men stood up and simply talked; the craft itself — the fool, the straight man, the pause, the built routine; the grand theatres, yose halls, agencies and academies that keep the art employed; the contests and cameras of the modern boom, from the M-1 Grand Prix to the streaming era; and forty pairs, masters, champions and pioneers, in whose timing the whole history can be heard.

Every entry gives the act, stage or institution itself, how it got here, where it stands now, and a Watching & Checking note directing you to the official source for current bills and tickets — because this book describes the art, not this month's programme. Living performers are described factually and briefly, with no routine retold and no famous line quoted: manzai exists in the air of a room, and this book's purpose is to send you to the room. Written and produced in Japan by Aki Wakamatsu.

Written and created in Japan by Japanese author Aki Wakamatsu. Published by Takikawa TOKOTOKO Kids LLC, a Japanese publisher in Hokkaido, Japan. Authentic Japanese content, carefully made in Japan — not mass-produced.