The Time of Laughter: Comedy and the Media Cultures of Japan

From broadcast to social media, comedy plays a prominent role in Japan’s cultural landscape and political landscape. The Time of Laughter explores how comedy grew out of the early days of television to become a central force in shaping Japanese media over the past half-century. Comedy and its impact, David Humphrey argues, established a “time of laughter” in the media of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in Japan. Through masterful interrogation of Japanese televisual arch...