Stand-up parodies Japan's far right at packed venues Justin McCurry in Tokyo Friday October 1, 2004 The Guardian
It is standing room only at a theatre in central Tokyo as a stocky man in full military garb takes his place in front of a huge rising-sun flag.
Eyes front, he belts out the first few lines of the national anthem. Suddenly, his creditable baritone transforms into a high-pitched whine in a bold and deliberate mark of disrespect for the flag, this venerated symbol of Japanese nationalism.
His audience, meanwhile, is falling about.
The man's name is Minoru Torihada, and his comic antics are the nearest today's Japan gets to cultural insurrection. Torihada (it means goose pimples in Japanese) looks and sounds convincingly like the far-right politicians he parodies.
His 90-minute polemic, delivered atop an upturned beer crate, is shocking, brave and frequently obscene, and it is packing out theatres across Japan. So convincing is his onstage persona that people have been known to arrive at theatres believing that they have come to listen to a modern-day version of Yukio Mishima, the rightwing author who committee ritual suicide in 1970 after failing to lead a military coup.
But there are clear signs that his tongue, whether lambasting feckless Chinese, religious zealots or much-loved Japanese historical figures, is firmly in his cheek. His blue suit is ill-fitting and emblazoned with hackneyed patriotic slogans, and his character, with all his sexual inadequacies and unbridled racism and sexism, is too appalling to be taken seriously.
No group is spared: Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, South Koreans, Mitsubishi Motors, as well as the influential Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai, and even the alleged US deserter Charles Jenkins, whose crime, in Torihada's eyes, was to have been born with jug ears.
Though he began his career 10 years ago in more mainstream comedy, Torihada is not interested in television, which prefers its humour safe and saccharine. He doesn't seem bothered by his self-imposed exile from the conventional comedy world, believing his natural home is on the stage.
"I decided a while ago that I wanted to perform in front of theatre audiences," he told the Guardian following a recent performance in Tokyo. "I knew I wouldn't be as well known, but my potential lies in live performances. I know it won't make me famous, but that doesn't really bother me."
Torihada also takes his act to Tokyo's streets, shopping malls and subway trains, delivering rightwing rants to bemused, and occasionally appalled, passers-by.
He concedes that his humour loses much in translation. His only previous overseas gig, in New York, was a disaster: only a handful of people in the largely American audience understood his monologue.
His best laughs came when, still in his politician garb, he got up and danced at a Bronx nightclub. "They thought I was just another weird Japanese tourist, and they loved it," he said.
Offstage, he begins to sound like the politicians he parodies when discussing the ills of modern Japan.
"We are losing our strength as a nation," he says, before lamenting the spread of massage parlours and bars run by foreigners. "And OK, there is worldwide interest in Japanese culture, but who made all the money out of The Last Samurai? It wasn't us."
He is being mischievous. "But nationalism is not the answer," he adds.
He admits that separating his offstage and onstage personas can be difficult, but relishes confusing less switched-on members of his audience. "If people come and see me and really think those are my true beliefs, then I win as a performer."