東アジア笑話に見る放屁譚 - 笑いとネタの共有をめぐって -

Abstract

The diffusion of comedic stories throughout East Asia influenced the Edo Hanashibon (Japanese funny tales of the Edo period) where fart stories became a major subject. We have considered the whole horizon of funny tales in East Asia, which includes Korean ones too. If we take a look at the characters that appear in “fart stories” in general, we can find some of the features that are common to this particular genre all over East Asia (In our research this area includes only China, Korea and Japan). In the Edo Hanashibon compilation we have the work titled “The mother-in-law’s fart” “The maid’s fart”(We can find the same theme in Aesop’s fables and “The tale of the wise Sinbad”. ), and “The burglar’s fart” which became a common tale to those three countries in East Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Lastly, we will center in another subject of the Edo Hanashibon. In this compilation we could also find many funny stories about the theme of fart’s happening in prostitution scenes, that is to say, between the prostitute and her client. The funny point of these stories is the same as the one in “the mother-in-law”, “the maid” or “the burglar”, namely the taboo represented by the act of farting before a partner to whom the relationship is quite strained. The abundance of these stories is probably the result of the particular moods of that period, which asked often for such kind of setting and such kind of strained-related characters. We postulated that the latter formation of tales is just the natural development of these concrete motifs.