RAKUGO

RAKUGO is a kind of comic storytelling which has 300 years or more history. Each performance is performed by one storyteller, HANASHIKA. A HANASHIKA sits down on the stage and plays all the roles in his story by himself. Many of the stories have handed down from mouth to mouth through the generations.
Today, RAKUGO is rarely heard among Japanese young people. But I want to introduce some of jokes from RAKUGO, because I think they help to tell the styles of our humor. Sadly, the Japanese humor has recently became more simplistically and poor, though.

A storekeeper asked his employee.
"Could you borrow a hammer to nail from the next-door neighbor?"
"No, sir." The employee answered.
"When I asked him that, he asked me what our nails were made from. I said they would be steel. Then he said that he would not lend it because the head of hammer might wear down from hitting such a hard thing."
"What a stingy man!" The storekeeper said. "Okay, I'll use mine."

There was a father and his son, both were drunkards.
One day, the father came home drunk as usual but the son was still out. He said to his daughter-in-law.
"He must be drinking this late at night. Damn drunk! I'll lecture him not to drink anymore. And I'll find a nondrinker for your new husband."
He started sleeping while saying so.
Then the son came home drunk and found his father sleeping. He said to his wife.
"He must have drunk and slept. Damn drunk! I'll lecture him not to drink anymore. And I'll find a nondrinker for your new father-in-law."
After hearing the voice, the father woke up and said to his son.
"I can see your head increasing to three or four. I'll never hand over my house to such a creepy monster!"
The son said.
"I don't need a house that is turning around like this!"

Several young fellows were talking about what they were afraid of. They gave various things like ghost or snake.
But, one guy said.
"I'm not scared of nothing but MANJU."
MANJU is a kind of cake. The other guys thought strange and agreed to play a trick on him.
They locked him up in a room with a lot of MANJUs. Though they expected he would scream and run out the room, nothing could be heard from there.
When they peeped in the room wondering what was going on, he almost ate up all the MANJUs. They were surprised and one of them asked him.
"Actually what are you afraid of?"
He answered.
"I can't eat anymore. This time, I'm afraid of a cup of tea."