Monthly Archives: October 2013

A Japanese TV institution is coming to an end. On the Tuesday afternoon edition of “Waratte Iitomo” (It’s Okay to Laugh) comedian host Tamori (real name Morita Kazuyoshi) confirmed rumors that the live studio show will air for the last time next March after 32 years on the Fuji TV network. The show is broadcast with a live (and almost entirely female) audience from Studio Alta next to Shinjuku station in Tokyo every weekday, with highlights and outtakes shown on Sundays.

The show features regular celebrity co-hosts who rotate during the week. On Tuesday, they included SMAP member Nakai Masahiro, who brought up the rumors and had them confirmed by Tamori.

The very first show was aired on October 4 1982, when the special “Telephone Shocking” guest was pop legend Sakurada Junko. The show is what established Tamori as one of the best known faces in the nation.

On April 5, 2002, Tamori set the Guinness World Record for the longest continued hosting of a live television program with the show’s 5000th edition. Tamori, with his trademark sunglasses (worn to conceal an eye injury suffered many years ago) is one of Japan’s trinity of top television comedians, along with Kitano “Beat” Takeshi and Akashiya Sanma.

See the Japan Zone profile of Tamori.

After all the updates on the damage being caused by the biggest typhoon to hit Japan in 10 years, today’s morning variety shows discussed the sad loss of animator Yanase Takashi. He died of heart failure on Sunday at the ripe old age of 94. Energetic and optimistic until hospitalized with liver cancer in August, Yanase was the creator of some of Japan’s best loved anime characters.

“Soreike Anpanman” was first broadcast in 1988, when Yanase was already a veteran at the age of 69. Starring a superhero with a head made of anpan (sweet bean bun) the central theme of the show for young children was justice, compassion, and self scrifice. Anpanman was regularly called upon to help those in need, when he would invariably let them eat a chunk of his anpan head. Yanase has said that the theme grew out of his harsh experiences serving in the Imperial Army in China during WWII.

Soreike Anpanman featured a never ending cast of characters, and was recognized by Guinness Book of World Records in 2009 for the record 1,768 different characters who had appeared on the show. After northeastern Japan was devastated in the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the show’s theme song was often played in the region to cheer up survivors.

Actress Toda Keiko (56) spoke of her sadness, “Mr. Yanase was the Anpanman. He embraced us gently and taught us to share. We’ve lost a precious guiding post.”

Yanase became a cartoonist after a more traditional career at a newspaper company and the Mitsukoshi department store. In 1961 he gained fame as the lyricist of the popular kids song, “Te no hira wo taiyo ni”.