Understanding Humor in Japan
eBook - ePub

Understanding Humor in Japan

  1. 264 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Understanding Humor in Japan

About this book

Japanese conventions about comedy and laughter are largely unanalyzed. For many students of Japanese culture and visitors to Japan, Japanese humor seems obscure, incomprehensible, paradoxical, and even nonexistent. By bringing together scholarly insights and original research by both Japanese and non-Japanese experts, Jessica Milner Davis bridges the differences between humor in Japan and the West and examines the entire spectrum of Japanese humor, from ancient traditions and surviving rituals of laughter to norms of joke-telling in ordinary conversation in Japan and America.For anyone interested in Japan, Japanese culture, and humor studies, Understanding Humor in Japan is an important teaching tool. It provides accessible, illustrative examples of humor in both Japanese and English with explanations of their meaning and cultural significance. Scholarly yet readable, these essays offer intelligent discussion on such topics as the Japanese delight in wordplay, the comic content of Japanese newspapers, the role of film and television in developing Japanese stand-up comedy, and formal censorship and its impact on humorous writing and self-expression in Japan. Understanding Humor in Japan breaks new ground in the study of humor and sheds light on much that is taken for granted about the role of laughter in civilized societies.

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Yes, you can access Understanding Humor in Japan by Jessica Milner Davis in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literatura & Crítica literaria. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. List of Illustrations
  6. Preface
  7. Editor’s Note
  8. Introduction
  9. 1. Laughter and the Traditional Japanese Smile
  10. 2. Osaka’s Culture of Laughter
  11. 3. A Ritual Performance of Laughter in Southern Japan
  12. 4. Manzai: Team Comedy in Japan’s Entertainment Industry
  13. 5. Sha-re: A Widely Accepted Form of Japanese Wordplay
  14. 6. Conversational Jokes in Japanese and English
  15. 7. Rakugo and Humor in Japanese Interpersonal Communication
  16. 8. Forgotten Women: Two Kyōka Poets of the Temmei Era
  17. 9. Farce and Satire in Kyōgen
  18. 10. Senryū: Japan’s Short Comic Poetry
  19. 11. Humor in Japanese Newspapers
  20. 12. Satire and Constraint in Japanese Culture
  21. List of Contributors
  22. Bibliography
  23. Index