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If Japan needed another indication of just how serious the COVID-19 epidemic is and may yet become, it got a wakeup call when its most beloved funnyman, Ken Shimura, died at age 70 at the end of March. Shimura, who had first battled pneumonia in 2016, was hospitalized nine days earlier with what appeared to be a recurrence, but doctors quickly realized it was the dreaded COVID, and the man who was to Japan what the two Jerrys—Seinfeld and Lewis—have been to us breathed his last.
Despite aggressive attempts early on to shut down the disease with social distancing, the plague has roared back to life, forcing Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike to ask city residents stay indoors at least on the weekends and be more rigorous in their social distancing. But the death of the otherwise healthy Shimura is a blow to the psyche of a nation that he had once helped laugh its way out of its problems, a postwar Japan that had been brought to its knees by war and poverty.
Having watched Shimura's comedy as a youngster and serving as a producer on one of Jerry Lewis' last films, Max Rose, I can easily see how he modeled his comedy after Lewis' work. From the slapstick to the pratfalls and the dark humor, Shimura learned from the master. Shimura, like Lewis, didn't suffer fools gladly and had a bite to his comedic personae.
On the set of our film, I got a glimpse of this side of Lewis when I watched our director carefully and painstakingly explain how a particular scene was going to go down. Lewis just shook his head, said no and asked that the cameras roll. He knew exactly how the scene was going to play out and had already made up his mind how he was going to play it. He didn't say it to be rude. He just knew where he was going and how to get there, and he wasn't looking for help.
Another time, at a fan event, Lewis refused to shake the hand of a woman who had begged him to do so. He also replied with a question to a man who had asked him a perfectly normal question, asking him whether he had a library near his house. If he did, Lewis said, the man should go get his book, which would answer his question.
I don't know how Shimura would have handled those situations, but his comedy always had a similar bite to it, in contrast with his erstwhile partner Cha Kato, the sunny optimist who played to Shimura, like McCartney played to Lennon.
After World War II Japan desperately needed a few laughs, and Shimura, much like Jerry Lewis here, was Japan's funniest man and lifted the spirits of millions of Japanese. Saturday at 8 p.m. was appointment viewing for Shimura's comedy. Finding humor and optimism in hardship is no small thing, and that's the legacy he leaves behind for the millions of Japanese who are once again facing an existential crisis.
"He was a member of the Drifters, the most popular comedy group in Japan, which debuted in 1965," recalled Makoto Morohoshi, a record producer and former A&R director for Pony Canyon Records. "Even after the Drifters broke up, he continued to appear onstage and on TV and was extremely popular for years, from the elderly to young children. He was a comedic genius."
Another who remembered Shimura is Jim Peterson, an American who grew up in Japan and played with him in a few of his sketches, including this one, in which Shimura played an umpire and Peterson an American baseball player who argued that a pitch be called a ball instead of a strike.
Peterson, who today serves as a Christian missionary in Japan, remembered Shimura not just as a colleague but as a comedian he got to observe up close after watching him on TV as a child.
"He was larger than life. I'm amazed our parents let us watch any of it, but it was hilarious!" Peterson remembered. "His humor was classic: little-kid, potty humor, taken to extremes. And there was lots of very crass mocking of old people, the handicapped, teachers and hardworking blue-collar folk. As his audience, my generation, grew up, so did his comic material...but not necessarily in a wholesome way. It just got more and more outlandish and perverted—and, of course, hilarious."
And just as Shimura took inspiration from Lewis, so did he inspire a generation of Japanese, reminding them not to be so serious and to always look for the laughs, even in the most difficult of circumstances, like the pandemic that silenced him.
"Most of us who are executives in the entertainment industry grew up with his comedy, and we learned from him what entertainment could do to enlighten our lives," recalled Haji Taniguchi, the former chairman of the Music Publishers Association of Japan and a professor at Sanno University. "We will miss him very much."
Mark Joseph is a producer, author and commentator and the producer of the documentary Japan: Searching for the Dream.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own.
