Toward the end of this most agreeable essay on the local comic spirit, Howard Hibbett observes: "To analyze a national 'sense of humor,' that most dubious aspect of the dubious concept of national character, is to venture into the perilous realm of ethnic humor itself."
So it is, but the author, master translator of Junichiro Tanizaki and Yasunari Kawabata and a noted Japan scholar, is well able to traverse this precarious ground. He knows that, as Saul Steinberg once said, "trying to define humor is one of the definitions of humor." Consequently, he lets Japanese humor speak for itself and discovers whole worlds of merriment, a place "far more expansive than any stereotyped view or single theory can accommodate."
Distinguishing among the various kinds of humor, one can discern that much of the best is concerned with "deflation," as indeed one might expect in such a status-stuck culture as this one is. Looking at a hanging scroll, one viewer asks another: "What on earth do you make of it?" The other answers, "That's a carp swimming up a waterfall." To which the first says: "Is that so? I thought it was eating noodles."