Ikariya Chosuke

[Aaron Gerow]

As the one who usually does obits on KineJapan, I regret not having 
done this myself (Having just got back from Japan, I was swamped with 
work).

One thing we mustn't forget with Ikariya is that he was the leader of 
the comedy team The Drifters, which was active both in music and 
comedy, and featured such prominent entertainers as Kato Cha, Takagi 
Boo, and later Shimura Ken. There were about 20 Drifters movies made at 
Shochiku from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Most had "Zen'in shugo!" 
or "Dorifutazu desu yo!" in the title, and featured the group before 
Arai Chu left (Shimura Ken later replaced him). While the films are fun 
to watch, they don't have the edge of the early Crazy Cats films, or 
the depth of the Shochiku comedies of Maeda Yoichi, Morisaki Azuma, 
Segawa Masaharu, or Yamada Yoji (though I think Segawa and Maeda did 
one or two of those films). But they do testify, first, to the 
dominance of Shochiku in comedy in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as to 
the importance of Watanabe Pro in the Japanese entertainment industry 
(they managed such other stars as the Crazy Cats, the Peanuts, Kayama 
Yuzo, Fuse Akira, and many others--as well as produced numerous films).

The TV "Zen'in shugo" was one of the last truly mass TV shows, getting 
on average over 30% in the ratings (the Drifters' "Dorifu daibakusho" 
was also a big hit). But the general impression was that their comedy 
was thus "good for the whole family" and especially the favorite of 
children. (Again, this is not a bad thing per se, but it does serve as 
background for some of the more biting humor of the manzai boom in the 
1980s, such as that of the Two Beats).

Still, more needs to be done on Japanese comedy in film.

Aaron Gerow
Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University
53 Wall Street, Room 316
PO Box 208363
New Haven, CT 06520-8363
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6764
e-mail: aaron.gerow at yale.edu