A Cultural History of Postwar Japan

by Shunsuke Tsurumi

  A curious aspect of the art of manzai is that the performance was never a drama. In manzai, the performers were always themselves, and they told whatever they wanted to tell as something they had experienced (even if the experiences were invented). In

  13 Vaudeville scene in the late Edo Period

  this, manzai differs from the rakugo, the art of telling droll stories, another vaudeville art fostered in the Edo Period. In rakugo the stories are presented as tales, not as something that has happened to the teller himself. And as the art of storytelling gained social status in the age of television, all the noted Rakugo specialists came to enjoy a high standard of living, which cut them off from the materials which made up the stuff of their stories such as public bathing houses and communal barracks with shared toilets. An exception was Kokontei Shinsh (1890–1973), who continued to visit the public bathing house, carried on a young man’s shoulders, believing that his art would wither if cut off from the roots of his stories.

  Manzai performers could not follow the same development as rakugo performers because of the nature of their art. When many film actors, novelists, singers and television talents went into politics and were elected members of the Upper House, four manzai performers also became M.P.s. But none of these manzai M.P.s entered the ruling Conservative Party. They stayed in parliament as independent critics. This indicates something of the character of manzai.

  14 Vaudeville scene in the early Meiji Period

  At the beginning of the Taish era, in 1912, Yoshimoto Taiz, a kitchen-ware dealer in Osaka, went bankrupt because he had neglected his business to frequent vaudeville theatres and patronize the performers. He began a new business, building a chain of vaudeville theatres. His wife and his wife’s younger brother were talented in management, and in a few years the family had succeeded in a new enterprise of managing talent for vaudeville theatres as well as establishing a chain of small vaudeville theatres all over Osaka. Later this Yoshimoto company came to own a chain of vaudeville theatres in most of the major cities in Japan. Through Yoshimoto’s efforts, the small vaudeville theatres born of community life in the city of Edo survived the age of industrial ization. The middle Edo Period had something of the character of mass culture. It was now inherited by the mass culture of the industrial age, blossoming in the Taish Period.

  The Yoshimoto Enterprise under the direction of Yoshimoto Taiz, concentrated on acquiring rakugo performers. After her husband’s death, Taiz’s wife, Yoshimoto Sei, took over and made the highlight of the city show the farm girls’ dance about catching mudfish (yasukibushi). In the Shwa Period from 1926, Yoshimoto Sei’s younger brother, Hayashi Shnosuke, decided to make manzai the centre of the vaudeville acts. In 1925 radio broadcasting began in Japan, which helped the swift growth of manzai.

  At the time, the sociologist Hasegawa Nyozekan (1875–1969) warned that the development of mass communication like movies, photographic magazines, gramophone records and radio, would bring about a decline also in live arts such as singing and festival dancing in villages and towns, and would in the long run result in the decline of the original (not reproduction) arts, Yoshimoto’s programme of preserving small theatres and sending manzai performers all over Japan was an effort to counteract the lethargy brought about by the swift development of mechanized forms of communication.

  Up to this time, manzai performers had learned their techniques through an apprenticeship to veteran manzai couples, and jokes were extemporaneous. After 1933, however, two men, Akita Minoru (1905–1977) and Nagaoki Makoto (1904–1976), compiled a catalogue of jokes which could be used as fragments of manzai dialogue.55 In 1931, the Mukden Incident, then known in Japan as the Manchurian Incident, took place, marking the beginning of the Fifteen Years’ War. In 1933, due to the pressure of popular sentiment as a reaction to the fighting, the group tenk (apostasy) of the Communist leaders was made public. The result was a mass defection of the rank and file of the leftist movement. Akita and Nagaoki were students of Tokyo University and participants of the leftist movement. They shared a room in a student boarding house, and printed leaflets which they distributed in factories. Akita worked as an organizer of the outlawed leftist Japan Metal Workers Union, under the leadership of Zenky (the National Council of Labour Unions of Japan). As he could not publish direct criticism of contemporary social trends, Akita began to write humorous dialogues for publication in commercial magazines. An Asahi newspaper reporter then introduced Akita to a manzai couple, Yokoyama Entatsu (1896–1971) and Hanabishi Achako (1897–1974), who performed a new type of manzai dialogue based upon direct observation of contemporary events. This meeting prepared the way for Akita to become the mastermind of the manzai trade for nearly half a century. For some time a sale would be held after vaudeville shows of jokes written by Akita for manzai couples. Akita recorded a vast

  15 Manzai team Hanabishi Achako (left) and Yokoyama Entatsu (right)

  number of jokes, classified according to form and theme. Part of them were published recently. They consist of little jokes like this:

  Conservation between a lady passenger and the captain of a ship:

  Lady passenger: I’m afraid of getting seasick. What would you recommend as a meal?

  Captain: Eat the cheapest dish on the menu.

  This brings out into the open the very thing which the lady has tried to banish from her thoughts: vomiting.

  Conversation between two children:

  Elder brother: I’m frightened of war.

  Little brother. Why are you frightened?

  Elder brother: Because you are killed by the enemy.

  Little brother: Then I’ll be the enemy.

  This reveals an angle which the government tried to hide by controlling wartime opinion, with the co-operation of most scholars and writers of the time. Manzai, if left unrestricted, inevitably developed a critical viewpoint, at least hypothetically, and had therefore to be suppressed as the war continued, just as there was no room left for cartoons in the later stage of the war.

  Akita and Nagaoki worked for Yoshimoto Enterprise but had little to do in the last part of the war. After the war, Nagaoki wrote a comic radio script, Good-natured Father, for Hanabishi Achako, which made him the most famous comedian in Japan in the 1950s. Achako’s programme began in 1952 and lasted for 14 years. By 1959, it had been listed as the most popular programme on the national network more than 200 times, and Nagaoki was awarded a Note of Thanks.

  A contribution was made to the postwar development of manzai by two divorced couples, Miyako Chch and Nanto Yji and Ky Utako and tori Keisuke. Both of these held family counselling programmes on radio and television for many years in the manzai style. Before the war, the Japanese, obedient to government-enforced morality, were severe with divorced women. There has been a decisive change since the defeat. Miyako Chch and Nanto Yji, a manzai couple, began a marriage counselling show in which they talked with couples and added their own extemporaneous comments on the basis of their experience as an old

  16 Miyako Chch (left) and Nanto Yji (right)

  married couple. It was an innovative use of manzai and proved quite popular. After the programme had run for some time, the couple were divorced and Nanto Yji remarried. In prewar times, the programme would have been discontinued, but public opinion had undergone a change to which the broadcasting company directors were sensitive, and the programme continued after they disclosed their divorce. The public felt that a manzai couple who had been through a divorce and could still remain friends were better fitted to listen to the grievances of married life. Chch gained greater popularity, and Yji, her ex-husband, continued to

  17 tori Keisuke (left) and Ky Utako (right)

  play the part of the unworthy partner and to be a foil for his ex-wife.

  Chch was illiterate, and before her the famous Wakana of the Wakana-Ichir couple had also been illiterate. Considering the high literacy in Japan since the Taish Period, the illiteracy of the two greatest female manzai stars reveals the position of m
anzai in the hierarchy of popular arts in Japan. Manzai has long been a popular art representing the uneducated class. To this class the leaders of the opposition parties, including the Communists, Socialists and the New Left, seem a shadow bureaucracy, closely resembling the ruling bureaucracy. Distrust of the leadership and the expression of the simple needs of the people have characterized manzai from ancient times to the present day.56

  In 1823 an English man of letters and dramatic critic, John Payne Collier, wrote Punch and Judy, in which he traced the lineage of Punch back to the devil of medieval religious drama, and through him further to characters in pre-Christian Greek mythology.57 Since his introduction to England from Holland by William of Orange in 1688, Punch has for three hundred years been a symbol of the evil man, and the cheerful evil man at that, and has encouraged the English to distrust official proclamations, made from time to time, that all was well. Punch helped to preserve the idea that there existed cheerful evil men working evil, and to preserve a spirit critical of the general political situation.

  In contrast to Punch, the manzai couple stood for the inarticulate wisdom of the ignorant which is again and again crushed by the articulate wisdom of officials, but nevertheless perseveres. It is like a genius loci asserting itself in spite of the yoke of universalization imposed for 2,000 years. During the Occupation, I heard the following manzai joke:

  Man (boasting): ‘Inu’ is ‘dog’ in English.

  Woman: My, you know English well.

  Man: I had a university education. Of course I know.

  Woman: What about ‘neko’ then?

  Man: ‘Cat,’ It’s easy.

  Woman: Really you are marvellous. What about cow?

  Man: Eh, eh, cow is eh…‘Niik’ (niku means ‘meat’ in Japanese).

  The man’s ignorance is revealed to the audience, and woman and man, facing the reality of their ignorance, promise each other to talk henceforth without pretence. This was produced at a time when Japanese who knew English had a higher social status. The audience is drawn into a fictitious world. Today men are trained to be and work like machines, and to acquire a machine-like accuracy. ‘The Manzai’ is a criticism of such machine-like skill as valued and practised by the ruling bureaucracy.58

  18 The Manzai performance by the Two Beats (Ts Biito): Biito Takeshi (left) and Biito Kiyoshi (right)

  5

  Legends of Common Culture

  I have argued that cartoons and vaudeville dialogue occupy a place at the periphery of common culture in Japan and criticize the all-pervading middle-class smugness of the era of economic prosperity from their particular vantage point. I have discussed why Japanese comic strips, which began as an imitation of their U.S. counterpart, deviated from the U.S. pattern and developed into an art form which can voice resentment and criticism, and suggested that picture-card showmanship and the lending libraries were a crucial influence. I turn now to mainstream common culture, as represented by the Great River Drama on television.

  Television was introduced to Japan on 1 February 1953, one year after the termination of the U.S. Occupation of the main islands of Japan.59 There were then, due to the Korean War, signs of swift economic recovery. Television would have been a dangerous weapon for the ruling class to give to people, had it not been for the economic recovery brought about by the Korean War. As it was, only once in its history did television accelerate resentment against the government. This was during the May and June protest of 1960, when people were informed of round-the-clock developments in parliament and left their supper tables to join the demonstration. I can recall no other instance of television helping to organize mass resentment against the government. During the Vietnam War, Japanese television, on the whole, took a critical stand and sided with demonstrators against the Japanese government’s co-operation with U.S. policy, but the major target of their criticism was U.S. policy and not the Japanese government itself. In the main, television in Japan has expressed the contentment of the people at large.

  Table 1: Changes in Number of TV Reception Contracts with NHK, 1954–1982

  In 1953 there were 1,000 television sets in Japan. They were located mainly in big restaurants and tea houses, where people went to watch television. In 1979, 27 million families owned television sets. Thus 95.3 per cent of Japanese have access to television in their homes while some families have three to four television sets at home, one for each member of the family. Why so many? Is it not too much of a luxury?

  According to a poll only 5.9 per cent of Japanese consider colour television unnecessary to their lives. In contrast, 20.7 per cent of U.S. citizens, 25.1 per cent of Canadians, and 33.9 per cent of the British consider colour television unnecessary to their lives (these figures are based on a world survey conducted in 1979 and published on 1 January 1980 in the Yomiuri newspapers).

  From the time of the Meiji Restoration until the end of the Fifteen Years’ War, in an ordinary citizen’s life there had been many tests of loyalty by which undesirable subjects were exposed and rejected. After the surrender and during the Occupation, there was a span of time during which there were very few of these loyalty tests. Each family was no longer required to place a Japanese flag in front of the house to prove to the neighbourhood that it was the house of a loyal citizen. Children brought up during the Occupation did not recognize the Japanese flag when it was hoisted on the top of public buildings at the end of the Occupation. When the national anthem, Kimi ga yo, was sung again, many primary schoolchildren recognized it only as a sum wrestling song because it had only been played on the closing day of formal wrestling matches. In 1980, fewer than one-tenth of the houses in Tokyo flew a Japanese flag on national holidays.

  National feeling had to be expressed in postwar Japan with other means than the national flag, the national anthem, the Imperial Edicts, and compulsory military training. In the post-Occupation period, especially after Japan had entered its period of swift economic growth, the television broadcasting of a song contest by NHK Television at the close of the year seems to have been a major national symbol.

  Kimura Tsunehisa, a photo cartoonist, had a keen sense of this function of the song contest as early as 1970. He combined NHK Television’s national advertisement with a recruitment advertisement by the U.S.A. and used it on the front of the newly erected NHK national broadcasting station.

  In 1980, ten years after the photo-montage shown opposite, the

  19 The NHK Song Contest of 1953. After this year, the contest came to be held on New Year’s Eve, rather than in the New Year.

  20 Photomontage by Kimura Tsunehisa

  NHK Song Contest was still the most popular television programme of the year. Many Japanese still visit the Meiji Shrine for the New Year ceremony, but the overwhelming majority spend the last hours of the year watching the NHK Song Contest on television with their families. This forms the final impression of the year that they have experienced, and the star singers of Japan are their chosen champions. In 1978, the programme had 77 per cent in the popularity rating.60

  21 NHK End of Year Song Contest, 1982

  Other popular programmes are the NHK serialized dramas, which occupy 15 minutes each morning and roughly correspond to the four seasons of the year, and NHK Great River Dramas which continue throughout the year on Sunday evenings. These television dramas, which we will come back to later, should be seen in the context of the history of film in Japan. Here, as an interlude, we will make a brief detour to the history of movies in Japan.

  Edison’s cinematograph was first introduced to Japan in 1897, and was shown in Osaka on 15 February of the same year. The first movie made in Japan was shown in Tokyo, at the Kabukiza Theatre on 20 June 1899. But it was in the Taish Period that movies became part of Tokyo citizens’ lives. This was the age of silent movies. There emerged professional ‘live talkers’ who would accompany the silent scenes. They used colloquial Japanese, putting in whatever they felt fitted the occasion. kura Mitsugu (1899–) became an independent ‘live talker�
�� in 1912, when he was only 13, and by the time he was 18 he was earning Yen 300 a month, enough to support ten families. He formed his own movie company with the money he saved.

  ‘Live talkers’ served to fit Western movies into the context of the everyday life of Japanese city dwellers in the 1910s. Movie makers in Japan, however, were not satisfied by such a compromise. True to the ideal of perfect imitation characteristic of the Taish Period, they sought to establish, alongside their studios, a training centre for movie actors and actresses, with Osanai Kaoru (1881–1928) at its head. The actors were required to follow the example of modern living—how to sit on a Western chair, how to walk in Western attire, how to use a knife and fork—set by Western movies and seen and closely scrutinized by the public. When the school was established, Osanai invited Slavina to be chief of the acting division and to teach students how to dress, sit, eat and walk. Slavina, formerly Countess Ludovskaya, had escaped to Japan from Russia after the Revolution of 1917, and her daughter, Kitty Slavina, became the first Japanese movie star.