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MESHIDA: MY JAPANESE PERSPECTIVE

ODC | View Performers Biography

Comedy

Venue:The City Cafe, 19 Blair Street Edinburgh EH1 1QR
Phone: 0131 220 0125
Links: Click Here for venue details, Click here for map
Ticket Prices: Free & Unticketed  
Room: Nineties
AUG 1-25 at 18:10 (60 min)
 
Show Image

Japanese stand-up comedian Meshida, performs his comedy in English and is also the founder of The Funny Japan Project. Meshida broke away from his corporate job in Japan and traveled to the United Kingdom to begin his stand up comedy career. Meshida uses his unique perspectives for introducing Japan's historical, religious, cultural, and gender dynamics to foreigners. 

Meshida distinguishes himself from conventional comedians in Japan by fearlessly delving into taboo topics. and sparking vital public conversations, which are showcased on his YouTube channel, 
Japanese Comedian Meshida. He has well over 180,000 YouTube subscribers and 100,000 TikTok followers and has performed over 600 solo comedy shows in Tokyo. 

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His Show is titled, My Japanese Perspective
He introduces funny Japanese culture and makes fun of current World news and events through his unique Japanese perspective, which is quite different from a Westerner’s viewpoint.His show is funny as well as educational.
Audiences are able to see the world from a never-expected angle.


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News and Reviews for this Show

August 25, 2024  Chortle
Given the extent to which Little Britain is now pilloried for its racially suspect sketches, it's ironic that Matt Lucas and David Walliams' show is the reason that Meshida became a comedian.

The Japanese stand-up was recommended the series by an English tutor, and Meshida delighted in its propensity for saying the unsayable, so different to the polite, disciplined, rules-based society at home.

With the benefit of hindsight, his lawyers are now in pursuit of that teacher for the association. But Meshida continues to be persecuted by the chalk-handed. After jacking in his corporate job to perform English-language comedy in Tokyo to expats, almost invariably English teachers, he grew accustomed to polite appreciation for his vocabulary rather than his jokes.

Happily, he's now continuing his education at the Edinburgh Fringe, where he's at least guaranteed an honest appraisal of his humour if not an escape from cultural stereotypes, he protests, from his karaoke room venue. All while sporting his print shirt of the famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.

He opens a little tentatively by gently belittling the adjectives 'Great' and 'United' in Great Britain and the United Kingdom, before admitting that Japan has been purloining some GB branding. Branching out into a run-through of other nation's mottos, it's more interesting than funny. But he draws a line under it with amusing, resigned acceptance that when it comes to calling the shots in South East Asia, China is in charge.

He doesn't fear invasion from the censorious superpower particularly, because Japan's rules about comedy are already pretty intractable – no political jokes and nothing 'controversial', whatever that means, he doesn't really elaborate. Beyond adding, absolutely nothing about sex.

With a declining birth rate and rapidly ageing population, Japan can't afford to be so reserved about carnal matters and frankly, frigid. He mocks another country for statistically being the lustiest in the world, suggesting a correlation with their unemployment figures. But he appreciates that it's a Pyrrhic snark.

And it's surely another dubious international correspondence that it was an English comedian who introduced Meshida to tentacle porn. The scales fell hard from his eyes as he came to realise that not only is it one of his nation's weirdest exports, against some stiff competition, but Hokusai was producing it 200 years ago, along with progressive prints of lesbian lovemaking.

He is principally a cultural commentator, who patently sees his role, to a sizeable extent, as a guide for Western audiences to such things as the traditional Japanese religion of Shinto and the wonder of his nation's toilets. Yet he doesn't have the observational acuity of, say, his compatriot Takashi Wakasugi, to generate big laughs from the latter phenomenon. Wryly, he notes the comparative levels of technological achievement and hygiene standards globally but struggles to elicit deeper levels of meaning.

He could also afford to open up more about his own journey, as he currently offers mere glimpses of the burnout that led to him becoming a comic, the workaholic and alcoholic pressures of his office role that he wilted beneath. Shallow material about the on-the-nose, literal translation of his name is all very well but it doesn't truly reflect the man.

That's to be lamented, because Meshida is a genial, animated host in his glorified karaoke booth, even breaking into song at one point. And he offers a proud introduction to his homeland, albeit with crucial, knowing caveats. Click Here

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