Watching the fast-paced, two-person manzai routines that characterize much of Japanese TV comedy these days, it's difficult to imagine that two key influences on that genre's birth were stars of cinema's silent era: Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin.
It's also difficult to imagine that Yoshimoto Kogyo, the entertainment company that is almost synonymous with manzai, would trumpet the foreign origins of its staple. And yet, in the second in a series of plays now being staged at its recently refurbished Namba Grand Kagetsu theater in Osaka to celebrate the company's 100th anniversary, that's exactly what they do.
"Kimi to Boku kara Hajimatta" ("It Started from You and Me"), is a brand new play that tells the story of Entatsu Yokoyama and his comic sidekick Achako Hanabishi, two performers who in the 1930s became Yoshimoto Kogyo's first full-fledged superstars — and who are now considered the "fathers" of modern manzai.