The Many Faces of Ken Shimura
Remembering a Japanese comedian who deserves more American appreciation
The loss of Ken Shimura is a tragedy that was mostly felt by the Japanese people. While you could find clips for many of his sketches on YouTube, I don’t think he was that well known outside of Japan. To me, this is a real shame, because his comedy had a universal appeal, and I think that he deserves some greater appreciation from those of us in the States, however belated.
I first encountered Shimura from his English lesson sketch, which most foreigners with a passing interest in Japanese pop culture have seen. It features a Japanese teacher (Shimura) giving an English lesson to English-speaking foreigners. It seems like a rather pointless exercise, until you realize that Shimura wants them to speak in broken Japanese “Engrish.” The foreigners are just as uncomfortable as you might imagine, but it was hilarious to see Shimura push them to speak English with a bad accent.
Granted, if a foreigner attempted this sort of sketch, they would probably be accused of racism, but from the perspective of a Japanese person, he’s simply poking a bit of fun at how English is taught in Japan. It’s a small piece of his larger oeuvre, but it gives you an understanding of Shimura’s fearless sort of comedy.
Ken Shimura was born on February 20th, 1950 in Higashimurayama, Tokyo as Yasunori Shimura. In 1974, he joined the comedian rock group “The Drifters,” a band that had been popular enough to play opening act for a Beatles concert. The band members eventually moved on to comedy full time, starting the sketch show Hachiji Dayo! Zen’in Shugo! (Eight o’clock! Come On, Everybody!), which was popular with children, but upset parent-teacher organizations due to its bawdiness. The program was eventually cancelled in 1985, though Shimura went on to start another show with fellow Drifters band member Cha Kato.
Two of Shimura’s most popular personas were “Hen’na Ojisan” (Strange Old Man) and “Baka Tono” (Silly Lord). Hen’na Ojisan defies explanation. He often springs out from the most unexpected places, chasing beautiful women and stealing their things. He also has a trademark dance and catchphrase (“Daffunda”) that he performs whenever he is caught.
Shimura’s Baka Tono was a caricature of Japanese feudal lords, but was often used to satirize contemporary Japanese politicians. Though such political commentary will probably fly over the heads of Westerners, much of Baka Tono’s humor derives from the goofy antics he and his numerous attendants got into. These antics range from scaring his female attendants with frogs to using dynamite to light someone’s bath.
Two other great characters of his were “Desh Otoko” (Desh Man) and “Hitomi Baba” (Old Lady Hitomi). Desh Otoko is a waiter who pronounces the Japanese word “desu” as “desh,” and repeats it a little too often. “Desu” is a copula meaning “to be” that is put at the end of most Japanese sentences. Overusing “desu,” however, can make one sound overly formal, and frankly, unnatural. Not only does Desh Otoko speak funny, but he’s also terribly clumsy. In the sketch, “Desh Man’s Beer Garden,” he can’t appear to stop spilling beer on the floor or all over his customers.
For Hitomi Baba, he dressed up as a senile, elderly woman, whose mind tends to wander and has a hard time remembering things. Perhaps my favorite skit with her is “Old Lady Hitomi’s Bar.” The poor customer just wants to get a drink, and poor Hitomi can’t stop screwing up at every turn: forgetting that she even works there, serving him poorly cut food, and leaving her dentures in his soup.
Sometimes, Shimura played opposite to fictional “daughters” who existed only to irritate him. Ohanabo, played by Yoko Ishino, in addition to her goofy hair, is also quite whiny. In one humorous sketch, she begs her father to get her orange juice from the vending machine, but for some reason or another, the juice always comes out wrong.
Minayo Watanabe also played such a figure in the skit “Ken and Minayo’s Secret Prison Break Tale!” If you are learning Japanese, you might enjoy the wordplay here. Shimura is trying to break out of prison, so whenever his daughter visits, he requests a number of items. The joke is that she always mishears him. For instance, he asks for a “kanenoko” (金ノコ) or “hacksaw”, but she hears “kame no ko” (亀の子) or “baby turtle.” Another time, he asks for “kayaku” (火薬) “gunpowder” and she gets him “zayaku” (座薬) “suppository” (a form of medical dosage).
I would now like to highlight some of my favorite gags and skits from Shimura’s long comedy career. Given that Shimura had been doing this for over forty years, it would be impossible for me to cover everything. Also, being an American, I doubt if I’ll ever understand his best or most culturally resonant jokes as well as a Japanese viewer could. All that being said, let’s take a look!
In the “airplane” skit, Shimura acts like an idiot who has never been on plane before, constantly marveled by the conveniences of music and free coffee. What really makes the skit work are the actresses who play the passenger and the stewardess, trying to be as polite as they can, though their irritation with him is thinly-veiled.
Another great skit of his involves cell phones, and I’m assuming that this was made when the widespread use of cell phones was still a novelty. When we were still so amazed by all the different types of cell phones, and the various ringtones that they had. Shimura plays on this by having cell phones of escalating absurdity, from tennis rackets, to hair pieces, to suitcases. The different ringtones are also hilarious, from a wailing baby, to a religious chant, to even a fart.
The door gag is a classic. It features a poor worker who comes to a boardroom meeting to bring documents. The trouble is that he just can’t get through the door. Every time the worker tries to open it, the way of getting into the boardroom becomes more and more ridiculous.
Another delightful skit is when Shimura plays a director filming a commercial for the dish oden. The actor they get to play the role of the “father” is a kabuki actor, played by Cha Kato. If you’re familiar with Japanese kabuki performances, then you know that the actors speak in an overly dramatic and archaic style. The first half of the skit has an increasingly annoyed Shimura trying his hardest to get the actor to speak in modern Japanese. The kabuki style, however, is so natural to him, that even when he tries to speak regularly, he unknowingly reverts back to his former ways. The second half of the skit deals with his struggle to eat the oden itself, which is surprisingly very hot. It’s hard for me to tell how much of the humor is scripted and how much is ad-libbed.
In “Steakhouse Shimura”, he acts as a chef so unsanitary that would make Gordon Ramsay explode. Loudly clanging on the grill, sweating onto the meat, and spraying pepper onto his customers’ faces. There’s a funny little detail where the boy, played by an adult, asks for a beer.
“Steakhouse” reminded me of another, older skit, “Sushi Complaints.” The first half is at a sushi restaurant, where Shimura just can’t stop spitting into his hands, on the food, and at his customers. The disgusted customers leave for a grill, where he again plays an old man whose constantly shaking hands have him spilling things all over them.
Another great sketch is “Everybody’s Annoyance! The Long Phone Call!”. Of course, in our modern world of smartphones, we can’t really relate to waiting in long lines for access to the public phone. So it serves as a nice time capsule for the problems of an older age. Shimura and the others are waiting in line behind Kato, who simply won’t stop talking. The skit plays around with the game of “telephone” where a message is passed down a line of people, often getting altered in the process. It starts off with the message, “Almost done?,” being passed down the line to Kato, but as he continues to waste his time, more “physical” messages are shared, from tearing up clothes to the classic pie in the face.
Shimura’s comedy was also known for its raunchy, sexual humor, to the point where it was not uncommon to see actresses go topless. At the start of his honeymoon skit, Shimura is clearly trying to goad his newlywed bride into removing her clothes for the bath and a cartoonishly long erection grows under his towel. As bawdy as this may seem, it was still rather tame compared to his other jokes.
Shimura also drew from the works of other comedians, citing Jerry Lewis as one of his influences. You could notice other such influences littered throughout his work. His Baka Tono character does a mirror pantomime which is a probable homage to a famous scene in the Marx Brothers film, Duck Soup.
Shimura also had a skit which was nearly identical to Rowan Atkinson’s Mr. Bean episode, “The Test.” Both sketches are about a poor fool who doesn’t understand a single question on a difficult test, so they try to cheat on the person next to them. The differences are small, with Shimura being a little more over-the-top, but overall, he does a great job of channeling Bean.
Shimura inevitably collaborated with many other celebrities. Adult video idol and activist, Ai Iijima, made a few appearances. One great skit stars him and Kato as policemen, trying to get Iijima not to commit suicide by leaping from a skyscraper. It’s all very tense until the high winds lift Iijima’s skirt and the two get happily distracted.
He also did a few skits with the great American actor Leslie Nielsen of Airplane and Naked Gun fame. One routine is a re-doing of a classic Shimura sketch, where he steals food from the train passengers sitting across from him whenever they get into a tunnel. This time, it is Nielsen who is the thief and his dead serious face throughout makes the whole scene all the more sillier.
In another episode, Nielsen and Shimura play detectives. The scenes where Nielsen enters Shimura’s home are a great satire of the culture clashes that often occur whenever foreigners visit Japan. Nielsen, for instance, tries to communicate with Shimura’s family in English, but they have no idea what he’s saying. He also commits a few cultural no-nos, like not taking his shoes off inside or mishandling the soba noodles at a restaurant.
Shimura also collaborated with Japan’s cross-dressing gay TV personality, Matsuko Deluxe. The portly Matsuko, of course, plays Shimura’s overbearing wife. Matsuko goes from berating him over what he was doing that night to asking Shimura what part of him he thinks is cute.
The great actor and comedian, Beat Takeshi, was also a common sight on Shimura’s shows. In their elder years, the two did a short, but impressive musical performance, with Shimura plucking away at the shamisen and Takeshi tap dancing. Shimura, of course, could be a real badass on the shamisen. His performance with the Tokyo Ska Orchestra in 2016 for a Kirin commercial, was nothing, if not applause-worthy.
If you watch enough of Shimura’s comedy sketches, you’ll notice that it’s not uncommon for the actors to occasionally break character and burst into laughter. For me, this doesn’t spoil the comedy. Far from it. All it just shows is that everyone is having a good time and it is a tribute to the friendly spirit of Shimura’s approach to humor.
Shimura appealed to a whole new generation through his 2000s show Tensai! Shimura Dobutsuen (Genius! Shimura’s Zoo!) where he interacted with various exotic animals. His regular partner was the chimpanzee, Pan-kun, who he tried to teach human activities, such as using chopsticks or riding a sedgeway. While I don’t doubt Shimura’s love for animals, the ethics of playing around with chimps can be questionable at best. Pan-kun himself had to retire from showmanship at a zoo after mauling a student trainee in 2012. Pan-kun and Shimura’s relationship was still very heart-warming, nonetheless.
Shimura passed away from coronavirus last year at age 70. He was, as far as I know, the first major Japanese celebrity to die from the disease. The NHK spoke to many Japanese citizens, young and old, for their reactions, and most of them fondly recalled watching him on TV. His old partner in crime, Cha Kato, joked about him getting into heaven so soon, promising to catch up with him again some day. The obituaries in English were decent, but felt a little truncated, and understandably so. Shimura was never a major figure in the States, and all that we know of his comedy is reduced to whatever is available on YouTube. I hope that, despite my limitations, I was able to offer a deeper, broader understanding of Shimura’s wide breadth of talent, and why the Japanese loved him so dearly, and though he is no longer with us, his will always live through the laughter he brings.
There is one way, however, in which Shimura made his mark on entire generations of Americans. From 1986 until 1992, he and Kato had a variety show called Kato Chan Ken Chan Gokigen TV (Kato and Ken’s Funny TV). It had a section in which viewers sent in their funniest home videos. Sound familiar? A version of this section was exported to the States in 1989, and adapted under the title America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Thanks for the laughs, Ken Shimura.
志村けんさん、笑いはありがとうございました。
