| The dissertation examines the relationship between corporate and consumer roles in the cultural production of the "local" manzai comedy of Osaka within Japanese media culture. The study is primarily based on anthropological research carried out from December, 1994 to March, 1996, at Yoshimoto Kogyo Co., Ltd.'s headquarters in Osaka, Japan. Today, Yoshimoto's comedians are a ubiquitous presence on television, radio, and the urban stage in Japan. In the 1930s, Yoshimoto entertainers and staff developed manzai into a comic dialogue-centered entertainment art that was broadcast nationally; yet, at the same time, it became strongly associated with the urban "commoners" (working and middle classes) of Osaka, most of whom were newcomers. In the postwar period, after manzai had been repopularized on television in the 1970s to 1980s, a Yoshimoto comedy school and a playhouse for its graduates were established, and these sites attracted a large number of manzai fans who also wanted to experience or perform manzai themselves at the center of Osaka's urban comedy culture, which could be called "theme park Yoshimoto." Yoshimoto, beyond any specific project or endeavor, has used localizing discourses, the celebrity of its entertainers, the company as celebrity, and the persuasive performative tools of the entertainment industry as promotional means to build, over the long-term, a nationally recognized corporate image and practice unified around localized "Osakan" comic entertainment, especially manzai. The study contends that the emergence of this corporate-produced Osakan manzai illustrates the significant role played by media producers as well as consumers in the cultural production of place and identity in Japan. The study further argues that Yoshimoto's school for manzai comedians demonstrates a shift towards a global trend: the increasing role of the interplay of corporate media producers and participant-consumers in the diverse localized imagery and settings of media culture. |
