I am grateful to have Rick H.'s Aug. 13 letter, " 'Sexcentric' jokes abound in Japan," and agree with him that Japan, like any other nation, is far from pure. Space in my recent Counterpoint articles did not permit going into a host of other forms of humor, such as rakugo and manzai, which are still very much in fashion today and, generally, most hilarious.
In addition to contemporary comedians and writers whom I mentioned, such as Hisashi Inoue, Sanma and Shinsuke, there are many other wonderful creators with a comic bent. To name a few, Issey Ogata is a comic actor and impersonator of genius; Shuntaro Tanikawa creates poetry that is profoundly whimsical; Yasutaka Tsutsui, Japan's premier science fiction writer, is the possessor of a very wicked wit in his satirical fiction; and there is subtle humor in the works of the very popular Haruki Murakami.
I wrote (Aug. 9) that Japan has no tradition of the dirty joke. This does not mean that the humor isn't, at times, raunchy and sexual. But it does mean that the Japanese do not tell each other off-color jokes as, for example, Americans do.
For the most part, the Japanese humor comes out of situations in real life. Sexcentric humor, yes; but dirty jokes about body parts and sexual proclivities told for their own sake, not common. Certainly there is nothing like the "Little Britain" of Matt Lucas and David Walliams. That sort of alternative humor just doesn't exist in public here.
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