Are there any elephants in the desert?!

Hidasi, Judit (2009) Are there any elephants in the desert?! Acta Ethnographica Hungarica, 54 (1). pp. 21-30. ISSN 1216-9803

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Abstract

Commonplace images from abroad of Japanese people and language hold that the Japanese are highly ritualized, harmony-seeking, and somewhat humourless. This study attempts to describe and analyze the reasons behind these images.It is pointed out that humour, and especially one of its characteristic genres, the joke, is a highly culture-specific construct. The topics of jokes differ from culture to culture and so does the kind of audience to which it is thought a particular joke can be told. It is also noticeable that humour competence and affinity for jokes — i.e. the capacity to produce, understand and perform humorous communication and interaction — is also a culturally programmed capacity. While in European cultures “humour competence” and “affinity for jokes” are considered intellectual virtues, in certain other cultures — like the Japanese — this practice has not been established. Based on a comparison with European discourse and communication practices we sought to identify the interaction and communication patterns that work against joke-affinity in Japanese culture.

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