On a Saturday evening in late May, at an auditorium in NHK's headquarters in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward, preparations for the recording of a popular show called "Bakusho On Air Battle" were underway.
Backstage, the participants -- all comedians with only a few years of professional experience -- were polishing their neta (comic material). Some were going to do manzai, an old-school form of comic dialogue performed by a duo, while others would do short silly skits known as konto (from the French word conte).
But far from being a barrel of cackling monkeys, the atmosphere backstage was tense and quiet; all of the young comics were obviously nervous.