Doko ga omoroi nen! Analys av Manzai diskurs på japanska

Abstract

Manzai (漫才) is a Japanese comedy style similar to stand-up comedy but done by two people in the form of a dialogue. One is the Boke “Funny man” and the other the Tsukkomi “Straight man”.

This work examines how manzai discourse is structured to create comedy by using the framework postulated by Abe (2006). His framework has three components namely furi, boke, and tsukkomi where furi “introduction” is added to the latter two. As Abe himself points out, his framework is still new and has been tested only for one manzai group Downtown. It needs much more further studies in order to find out what the basic structure of manzai discourse is and how much variations it allows to show each group’s characteristics. This work analyses two manzais by the group Non Style and the findings are compared with Abe’s findings on the group Downtown. As a secondary goal, it also examines the adequacy and insufficiency of Abe’s framework.

Downtowns style studied by Abe is based around spending more time preparing and executing each joke with longer intervals between them. They spend more time on furi, the introduction to the subject and follow up with more tsukkomi, criticizing the Funny man for his joke. In contrast, the result of the present study show that Non style put more focus on having many jokes and fast and use fewer furi and tsukkomi per boke. Abe’s three parameters (furi, boke and tsukkomi) do well in describing the three main steps to create comedy in manzai. One is the introduction of a subject that brings about expectations. After that comes the presentation of a concept that gives contrast to these expectations. Lastly the contrast gets confirmed and mediated to the audience. These steps seem applicable to several groups and can be said to be the basic structure in manzai.

The results of the present study also showed inadequacies in Abe’s three parameters. In one of the manzai used in this paper the comedy is built up with an extra parameter that can be called a “theme” for the boke. There also seem to be individual jokes where the normal assigned roles such as boke and tsukkomi become unclear. For these inadequacies the definitions in Abe’s framework are too strict to be applicable.