Jessica Milner Davis: Humour in Asian Cultures. Tradition and Context

Humour in Asian cultures. Tradition and context is a fascinating addition to the two volumes on Asian humor edited by the author (together with Jocelyn Chey) about Chinese life and culture (2011, 2013), and the book, Understanding Humor in Japan (Wayne State University Press 2006). Twice president of the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS), founder and coordinator the Australasian Humour Studies Network, and holder of ISHS Lifetime Achievement Award (2018) for her interdisciplinary research in humor, Professor Jessica Milner Davis is an evangelist and promotor of introducing Asian cultures to the Western audience and building the bridges of understanding between Eastern and Western perceptions and usage of humorous genres.

In collaboration with excellent researchers who authored the chapters in this book, she has created a highly informative, inspiring and eye-opening volume based on solid methodological ground and illustrated with interesting examples taken from six different places: Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and South Korea. The book consists of a theoretical introduction in which editor problematizes and summarizes the ideas presented in the volume, and ten chapters. Three chapters deal with Chinese and three with Japanese culture, and other chapters are devoted to other cultures mentioned above.

The order of chapters seems to follow a chronological approach, although sometimes it is not easy nor even necessary to set clear time borders for the phenomena analyzed. The first chapters concentrate on tradition, next ones on changes over time and the influence of the past on the modernity, and the last chapters focus on contemporary genres like TV shows and series.

In the introductory chapter “Humour and cultural context: Tradition and practice in six Asian cultures” Jessica Milner Davis describes the relationship of humor and cultural exchange, underlining the importance of cultural sensitivity for fruitful cooperation between various countries. She explains term humor and its variants in Asian context and discusses the cultural conventions of humor, rightly underlining that “it is preferable to talk about humor in a certain nation or culture,” rather than “Chinese humor: or “Japanese humor”” (p. 5), mentioning culture wars and the clash of opinions on what is truly national. She also introduces the chapters in the volume through the notions of cultural tradition, continuity and change. Jessica Milner Davis points out the importance of humor in challenging power as it undergoes cultural evolution. Those considerations give a broader theoretical and philosophical context to understanding the case studies included in the volume, as well as methodological tools to understand the terms tradition and context included in the volume’s title.

Second chapter by Shirley Chan is entitled “Humour as rhetorical discourse in ancient Chinese philosophy: The Works of Mencius.” In times of the contemporary permacrisis it is good to be remined that Mencius believed in the potential goodness of human nature. It is especially encouraging for scholars and academics to hear that he thought that humans have the tendency to become good through education (p. 23). It is also refreshing to hear some of the Mencius advice to the king; knowing that the monarch wanted to expand his territory by force, Mencius said: “doing what you do to seek for what you desire, is like climbing a tree to seek for fish” (p. 29). Shirley Chan reminds us that Lim Yutang (known for introducing the term humor (youmo) in modern China) underlined the serious national importance of humor, stating that without it people’s spirit will become “increasingly obstinate and ultraconservative” (p. 20). She also argues in her paper that Mencian humor “serves the purpose of criticizing social issues while enabling civil, reflective, and open-to-truth conversation” (p. 25). Even those quotes of this interesting chapter show us how relevant to the modern world the works of this ancient Chinese philosopher are.

The third chapter “Humour in the huaben novellas of the Ming Dynasty: The Guzhang Juechen 鼓掌絕塵 in context” by Antonio Leggieri presents an analysis of Clap your hands and rid yourself of dust – a collection of four medium-length stories, named respectively Feng (Wind), Hua (Flowers), Xue (Snow) and Yue (Moon), same as in the idiom: 凮花雪月, which means an idyllic scene, perfect for romantic encounter (p. 41). The author mentions several interesting concepts related to the parts of the stories depicted in the novels. One of them is the Chinese tradition of placing emphasis on non-events – overlapping or interstitial spaces between evens – treated as narrative units alongside with events in conceiving human experience in time (Plaks in Leggieri, p. 42). Reading about humor in the stories gives an insight into the world of Chinese court with all its intrigues, multiple characters, political plots, and powerful people, among whom is the palace eunuch Wei Zhongxian. He claims that everyone who offended him would lose a chi, inverting the common fictional paradigm of eunuchs who “grew back their penises after gaining high position” (McMahon in Leggieri, p. 48). Satire concerning the human body is only one of the multiple mechanisms occurring in the novellas, skillfully analyzed by Leggieri on both macro- and micro-levels. The chapter is accompanied with pictures of original plates that illustrate the chosen scenes from the stories, with the aim of “ridiculing the world” (p. 58). It brings back this long-lost world and allows us to take a glimpse at it with curiosity and a smile.

Linguistic devices in traditional forms of Balinese humor are analyzed in the chapter by Nengah Arnawa. The study using the anthropological linguistic approach presents oral, written and performative contexts to introduce four traditional Balinese joking (bebanyolan) constructs. The first one – cecimpedan – is a kind of game between opposing groups or individuals who ask questions to be answered quickly and correctly, like in one of the examples given: “What is it: when standing asleep, but when sleeping standing up”? The answer should be: “the soles of the feet” (p. 68). The second one - bladbadan – is a type of proverb used for joking in informal and intimate situations, highly dependent on the context. The examples include phrases used in a dialog between two clown figures from traditional shadow puppet theatre. The third form – wewangsalan – is a form of making fun, mocking or insulting someone using rhyming two liners. The fourth type – cecangkitan – are “lexically tricky” words with an ambiguous meaning. The chapter is accompanied by photos of the shadow theatre and a detailed analysis of examples and gives an insight into the complex phenomena of the unique linguistic forms of Balinese humor.

The paper “Pluri-modal poetic performance of banter: The Angama ritual on Ishigaki Island, Japan” by Makiko Takekuro takes us to one of Japan’s southernmost islands to observe a sacred event – the memorial rite to commemorate the dead and communicate with ancestors’ spirits. Doors and windows of chosen places are open for visitors who can take part in the performance where the youth (typically a pair of males) dressed in colorful costumes of an old ancestorial couple – an old women (without teeth) and an old man (with one tooth only) accompanied by their descendants take up ritual chants, sing, dance and exchange banter with the audience (p. 88). Humor that appears during the banter is understood and analyzed as pluri-modal poetic performance. The author explains the rules in a very clear and informative way, competently showing an interplay among various modes of communication, performances and artefacts in angama, and claims convincingly that the instances of humor show participants’ commitment to local values and identity, and lead to their reproduction and reinforcement of the ritual framework.

Japanese humor is also the focus of the article “Themes, cultural context and verbal exchanges in the cartoons of Machiko Hasegawa.” The author Sachiko Kitazume uses her “twist theory” to analyze humor in two contradictory comic strips to find the sources of their popularity in Japanese culture. The first one (Sazae-san) holds the Guinness World Record for the longest-running (since 1969) animated series in the world and centers around a good-natured, cheerful, but careless housewife. The second one Granny Mischief, written and illustrated by the same author, depicts an opposite character – malicious, mean, mischievous and greedy old woman, whose main interest is to cause problems to those around her. The moral values “belief in the innate goodness of humankind” argued by Mencius and “rewarding-good-and-punishing-evil” connected with moral code proposed by Confucius are themes strongly embedded in the Japanese culture. They give cultural justification to this clever humor and explain its popularity, but as Kitazume admits, luckily they “are shared with other cultures around the world” as well (p. 133).

The article “The makura of rakugo: Tradition and modernity” by M. W. Shores explains mysteries of humor in makura (lit. pillows) used in art, e.g., in traditional poetry, but also as warm up segments to Japan’s traditional comic storytelling art called rakugo. They are told to make audience feel welcome and prime them for laughter. “Rakugo, as an art of laughter, constitutes “the salt of life”” (p.138). The author underlines the changes in this traditional art, e.g., appearance of the first performing women – even if the “playing field remains unequal” (p. 155), omitting politically incorrect issues. The author writes about artists reading or “feeling out” the audience (see high context cultures, e.g., Hofstede 1980). It is interesting from the perspective of post-pandemic experience to read about the topic of vaccines qualified as “harmless” and safe topical material (p. 146), when at least in Poland but also in other European countries it was a hot and sensitive topic making enemies between friends and close family members. Fortunately makura allows to enjoy the same space with others – not family, but those you don’t usually spend time with, illustrating the very nice cultural concept Ichi go ichi e 一期一会 (one moment, one encounter) (p. 156). We should definitely learn the lesson and try to practice this kind of mindfulness which is gaining popularity now in Western countries.

We move to Korea with “To joke or not to joke? Politeness, power and the impact of tradition in Korean workplace humour” by Heesun Kim and Barbara Plester. The chapter deals with the “relationship between humour, politeness, and Confucian culture in Korean workplace context” (p. 173). Using an ethnographic approach in three different companies the authors show that superiors’ humor is not always funny but needs to be tolerated by subordinates despite being uncomfortable to them. Some instances mentioned in the paper fit the scapegoat theory of transferring guilt to groups or individuals (Douglas 1995), others show that the patriarchal hierarchy rules, allowing males with a higher position to joke about their female colleagues. Generally, “subordinates are expected to respond positively through smiles and laughter, and thus signal the appreciation towards the manager, regardless of their actual evaluation of the humour used” (p. 183). This shows how strictly power is related with humor not only in the Korean work culture but probably also elsewhere.

“Chinese conversational humour over time: Contemporary practice and tradition in Taiwanese cultures” by Wei-Lin Melody Chang and Michael Haugh shows that the younger generation favors the biting or harsh forms of teasing while older Taiwanese people prefer jocular wordplay both in the real-life conversations but also in dialogues in literary works – this method of combining different sources seems to work out quite well in this complex diachronic and synchronic study.

Another interesting chapter in this collection is entitled “We Are Real Friends: Women constructing friendship via teasing in a Chinese reality TV show.” Ying Cao skillfully explores the relationship between teasing, gender and friendship showing both the collaborative and non-collaborative uses of teasing. The show focuses on four women and their friendship, and the detailed analysis of joking strategies offers “a more complex and versatile interpretation of Chinese femininity that is usually available” (p. 219).

The study on TV series “Women who don’t know how to sajiao” (to act cute, to be cutesy, to be flirtatious) is presented in “My Unfair Lady: Gender, sajiao and humor in a Hong Kong TV series” by Marjorie K. M. Chan. The chapter deals with the relationship “between the world and that which it names” (p. 239) and discusses wordplay and hidden meanings in the names of the protagonists of this series in relationship to their behavior or some characteristic features. The combination of comedy of character and a comic plot is analyzed on the example of three scenes from the series. The author writes about the universal taboo in the imperial realm with regard to using the names of the emperor and his heir, making it customary to substitute the forbidden characters with other, non-forbidden ones, and also mentions the Scholars of Redology – the academic study of the classic novel Dream of the red chamber.

The reading of this informative book gives a sneak peek into different Asian countries and their various humors. The Authors also underline the importance of getting beyond ethnic labels and the need for recognizing the complexity of all cultures. It is not only pleasant but also highly educative experience that allows us to hear about the nuances of different shades of humor and learn many specific terms in the discussed languages. It is worth noticing that xenismes introduced into the volume open new ways of looking at the cultural concepts and made them visible, which is a good idea and seems to be part of some language policy to immerse the readers in the world of various humor related acts, genres and topics. There are many answers given which made the appetite for more answers grow. Reading the book edited by Jessica Milner Davis brings to mind a poem by Li Bai.^[1]

Question and Answer on the Mountain

You ask for what reason I stay on the green mountain,

I smile, but do not answer, my heart is at leisure.

Peach blossom is carried far off by flowing water,

Apart, I have heaven and earth in the human world.