YM COLUMN ARCHIVE

December 9, 2009

Black humor and Professor Hirao

This is about black humor. There is no definite definition on “humor” so its interpretation is free to an individual. So is a pun. Where and when to laugh or not is a kind of difficult to do. When you give it a second thought to what you said as a humor, sometimes you get terrified of your own remark. You really need to be careful; otherwise you put yourself in an unexpected trouble.

There is a senryu (satirical humorous poem) typical of all types of humors, not black one though, which goes as below:

“Yielded a seat, asked a due date, only begin diet”

This is a good phrase. For me, however, this is not somebody else’s problem.

Several years earlier I was listening with earphone to rakugo (comic storytelling) performed by Rakutaro onboard All Nippon Airways.

-----Nowadays, break is going on to a terrible extent between parents and children. The other day I telephoned my friend answered by his daughter so I asked her “Is there a dad?” (pun: “You need a dad?”) she said, “No, I don’t need one” so I hurriedly said “Give me your dad on phone” she said “He’s gone” I said again “Change the phone to your dad” (pun: “Change your dad”) she said “Dad changed last week”.-----

Well, well, what do you say?

At this very moment, a man next to me burst into laughter in spite of himself. It was so abrupt that he had a runny nose. Surprisingly an instant later, some more of passengers around there started out a loud laughter all together. Usually it is rather rare to laugh loud alone by oneself at something funny comic story on board an airplane. But like in the above case, once someone impatiently started out laughter, all the others lose self-control to collapse into chorus of laughter.

But when I told this to a friend of mine, he seriously got mad saying that rakugoka (comic storytellers) are no good guys telling the misfortune of people in such a funny way, which made me feel really depressed.

Let me pick up another black humor. A certain person Mr. A went to the hospital to see his friend suffering from bad illness. Entering a patient’s room, he found the patient having a grave condition with oxygen mask on. He seemed seriously ill to thrash his hands and legs, after all these sufferings he wrote something on a piece of paper to hand it over to Mr. A; instantly after he took his last breath. Mr. A put a piece of paper into his pocket and ran for a doctor; alas his friend never came back to his life again. On the train back home from hospital he came to think of a piece of paper handed to him so that he fumbled in his pocket for a crumpled paper. He was astonished; the paper said, “You’re stepping on my oxygen pipe!” This kind of a black joke must be unforgivable for the patients in hospital now. I know there must be an opinion, “To create a funny story from someone’s misfortune is out of the question”.

Dr. Kunio Hirao, professor of geophysics whom I truly respect, frequently visited India because of collaborated experiment with that country. One day he was handling test equipment at Thumba launch site when he felt some sharp prick in his ankle. “Could be ant?” he thought, but continued his work because he couldn’t stop what he was doing in the middle of operation. Then next came a prick to his knee. “Oh my goodness, ants climb up my leg? You wait and stay there!” to still continue his work. A moment later, “Ouch!” he cried out almost falling down in a faint. He was stung in the area most painful for a man. He hurriedly took off his trousers to see a scorpion there.

He was usually boasting that any water he drinks in India would do him no harm. Scorpion seems to be a different thing.

I’m writing this column on December 8, Pearl Harbor Day. I read an article in newspaper to say that there are many young people who answer “It’s in Mie prefecture” to the question “Where is Pearl Harbor?” Does this mean that they study geography but not history? If Dr. Hirao were here with us, he must deeply deplore the situation with distilled spirit in his hand.

I welcome your opinions on this column to the following E-mail address.
matogawa@planetary.or.jp

(Translated by The Planetary Society of Japan)

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