Japanese Comedy: So Funny, It Hurts

After class (Tomiaki) Daiku wearily tells me about the long road ahead for his pupils. If this class is typical, he says, only 3 percent of them will have a successful job in comedy five years from now. Those odds don’t dissuade people from shelling out 400,000 yen (roughly $5,000) for a course at the New Star Creation school in Tokyo or its sister campus in Osaka, where up to 1,500 students enroll each year. They’re hoping to earn a spot in Yoshimoto’s talent stable, work their way through the company’s theaters, and eventually hit the airwaves as owarai geinin—television comedians—like the stars of Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!!, who were members of NSC’s first graduating class in 1982.

Yoshimoto trains comedians, places them on the stage, casts them on shows, and takes a percentage of their earnings. “It’s like the old studio system,” says Yorihiro, of Yoshimoto Entertainment USA. “We take care of people throughout their careers and throughout their lives.” Top comedians are on several shows at once, sometimes recording more than one show a day. Yorihiro claims that a comedy superstar in Japan can earn as much as a top Hollywood actor.

It’s a given that part of what these stars will be called upon to do is perform in batsu games. Yoshimoto Kogyo prepares them to be entertaining regardless of the indignities they suffer. You can see this in another class at New Star Creation, about acting out emotions. The decorum of the stand-up class is gone; students now perform with ferocious abandon. One gyrates uncontrollably on an imaginary stripper pole. Two others slap each other in the groin while shouting, “Let’s get it on!” Another duo simulates oral sex with such intensity that their instructor suggests they get a room. There’s a hint of desperation to their antics, but it’s easy to see how aspiring comedians would endure strange punishments and humiliation to stand out. Eat a tube of wasabi? Sure. Nipple-clamp tug-of-war? A small price to pay for stardom.

Japanese Comedy: So Funny, It Hurts / By Joel Warner / 11.19.12 / wired.com