Issey Ogata - Comedian (Imagine Japan) - video Dailymotion

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Issey Ogata is known for his unique style of comedy that blends satire and absurdity, often showcasing his versatility as both an actor and comedian. His performances highlight his ability to engage audiences with humour that reflects on everyday life and societal norms in Japan. And then enters an Irishman, Duncan Hamilton... (video by Philippe Charluet) #isseyogata #Imagine #comedy #japanesecomedy #japan

Transcript

00:00Tonight on Imagine, we meet one of Japan's funniest performers.

00:05Good evening, Australian people.

00:09I am focusing on, do you know?

00:14Path the mother dragon, do you know?

00:18Live by the sea, do you know?

00:21Old, old song, I sing for you.

00:27Good evening.

00:30While Australian audiences are familiar with Britain's Rowan Atkinson

00:55or America's Steve Martin, very little is known about their Asian counterparts.

00:59One of Japan's greats is Ize Ogata

01:02and his fans spread right across the country.

01:05This is 89.4 FM Alpha Station coming to you from our Kitayama Studios here in Kyoto

01:10and a very sunny and beautiful day it is too.

01:13I'm Duncan Hamilton and I'll be here with you for the next little while

01:16and here is a little survey that caught my eye this morning.

01:19It's from the Japanese Frozen Food Association who asked the following question to their Japanese customers.

01:26It was what would you most like to freeze?

01:29Women said things like love, happiness, friendship and beauty.

01:35And men said beer, ramen noodles, whale meat.

01:41Duncan, you're an Irishman living in Kyoto doing the work of a Japanese comedian. Why?

01:47Well, I've been living in Japan for about nine years doing various work like this, you know, working as a DJ etc.

01:54And I became interested in Ize Ogata who's probably one of Japan's most well known comedians stroke actors.

02:05So we decided to try and make his humor more accessible to the outside world.

02:12And we began that by doing tests with foreign audiences to see if his humor would work in English.

02:18So he performed and I do the translation, the simultaneous translation in people's ears.

02:24Seemed to work very well and since then we've taken him out to, you know, New York and Paris and Berlin and places like that.

02:35Ize's brand of humor is very subtle, very dark and, you know, very unusual.

02:55So there's nobody like him in Japan.

02:57He's known in Japan as the man with 300 faces or something like that.

03:03He has hundreds of characters, salesmen, barmen.

03:09He concentrates on the horribly normal.

03:12So he picks, if possible, absolutely normal Japanese people.

03:16And he looks at the gap between how those people view themselves and how society views them.

03:23Ize's kind of a huge part of the human being.

03:30The human being is kind of a bad act.

03:33In the end, he is a bit of a bad act.

03:36He's a little bit of a bad act.

03:37He's a little bit of a bad act.

03:40The human being is kind of a bad act.

03:42He's kind of one of the things that I want to live in Japan.

03:44I'm happy to live and live.

03:46It's a movie that the viewers want to be able to give a hand to love.

03:52I'm happy to have a reply.

04:14a new scientifically proven religion from Guatemala.

04:19How did you feel when it was first suggested that Duncan perform your pieces?

04:44And I said, it's your bloody fault. I can't get an erection.

04:53So I rushed around a garden and I gathered up seven of Neville's gnomes.

04:58I don't obviously play a Japanese character when I start when I do the pieces.

05:03What I do is I change that to an English character in an English setting.

05:09The idea being that the humor anyway or the type of person is universal.

05:13And that's the reason I can stand there in such a place talking to you like this.

05:19Are comparisons made between the two?

05:22Well, I mean, Duncan says, like, you can't copy genius.

05:25And he sees Issei as a genius, so he wouldn't probably want to compare the two.

05:31But it's just fascinating for the Japanese side to see their work and their ideas put into a context.

05:37And I think Issei really shows the humanity of the Japanese

05:41as opposed to this stereotypical image they have.

05:45You've also been described to me as being a genius.

05:49How comfortable do you feel with that title?

05:51I think that I will see the future of the Japanese character in a new movie.

05:54I think I was like, you know, if I'm a genius, I wouldn't have thought of that.

05:59I'm not sure.

06:03I'm still making this movie.

06:05the thing about Issei is you know he's an actor you know in Japan he's not even

06:11referred to as a comedian these are very carefully crafted pieces of theatre

06:16in a way it's serious comedy he's so determined to be truthful bit too close

06:26to the bone for many Japanese we'll do a piece called the car park which is one

06:31of Issei's most famous pieces there's a salesman under pressure of work he's in

06:35a car park and he's waiting for a client to turn up and while he's in the car park

06:40he loses his memory

06:43have I caught amnesia why me I've struggled hard I have

06:57is my life gonna cut off here in a place like this

Issey Ogata - Comedian (Imagine Japan)

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