Saturday, August 20, 2011

Owaraigeinin お笑い芸人 (Japanese Comedian)

Laughing is essential in our life. When I am depressed or can't keep energy, I can relax after laughing.
Rakugo is traditional comedy. It is performance of story telling by one person (rakugoka) who is sitting on the cushion (Zabuton). Manzai (Stand up comedy) or comic skit is popular. A lot of comedians who called "Owarai geinin" appear every day in TV show now. "Owarai" means generic name of performance for comedy like Rakugo or Manzai and "geinin" means comedian in Japanese. A unit of a trio has a name. Geinin originally plays comic skit or manzai, however, appear in various situations. For example, Downtown is well-known unit. Hitoshi Matsumoto and Masatoshi Hamada is duo. They have a lot of own TV programs as hosts and these programs are very popular. Off coarse one comedian exists and they who are called "pin geinin" have a special own gag. These gags or phrases in there performance get vogue-word "ryukougo" 流行語 every year.
Japanese comedians belong to agencies. There are a lot of agencies. The biggest agency "Yoshimoto Kougyo" employs a lot of popular comedians. Popular geinin are genius for the art of storytelling. They are used in all of genres, TV, TV commercial, drama, quiz show, radio personality, movies or theater. Yoshimoto is an agency in Osaka, west area in Japan . So these comedians are almost from Osaka and they speak a special dialect "Osaka ben". Yoshimoto has some schools for people want to "owaraigeinin" in each area in Japan. Geinin of Yoshimoto play in theater in Osaka and Shinjuku (in Tokyo).
I like to see "Owarai" in TV. When I want to forget sad or bad news and feel negative, I can relax after having a lot of laugh. Laughing is an important prescription in my life.

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