Unit 3 Part 2: Dying Is Easy; Comedy Is Hard

Prompt for this blog:

Watch Kamabara and Yamabushi and compare/contrast the plays in structure, characters, etc. Do any of the one-liners remind you of past or recent jokes?

First, a brief synopsis of the two plays:

Kamabara

There are three characters in the play: an angry wife, her lazy husband and a passerby. The wife is angry that her husband won't go to work like other men. She gets frustrated with him and starts to beat him when the passerby intervenes. This man tries to pursuade the husband to go to work but the husband comes up with excuse after excuse. The husband then says that he has been humiliated by his wife and he is going to kill himself.

The wife jokes about her husband's gallantry and then calls the passerby away, leaving the husband in a dilemma. He has boasted that he will kill himself but with no one to see, the husband finds little incentive to actually do himself in. He tries multiple strategies but it is all for show and, with no audience or social pressure to carry through on his boast, he finally abandons the plan and concludes that it is far better for him to just go to work.

Yama Bushi

A mountain priest and his servant have been on a long and difficult journey and are returning home. The priest is very proud of the occult powers that he has gained through his religious and physical discipline. He takes great pride in his mastery of difficulties and asks his servant what the servant thinks of his master. The servant tells him how masterful he is and that he is a living Buddha, which greatly pleases the master.

They hear a strange noise and come upon a crab spirit that identifies itself with a riddle. When the servant goes to destroy the spirit, the crab grabs him with its pincer. The servant implores his master to use his many skills but, the harder the priest tries, the tighter the crab's grasp.

Eventually, the priest comes too close and the crab grabs him, as well. Then, it releases both men and scurries off with the priest and servant in pursuit - no smarter for their experience.


Both of the plays have three actors/characters. In Kamabara, the main character is the husband, with the wife as his antagonist and the passerby trying to mediate. Most of the play, however, is concerned with the husband's inner dialogue and his half-hearted attempts to do himself in.

The action is different in Yama Bushi. Here, although the main focus of the play is the overly prideful priest, all three characters - two humans and a spirit - are involved in the significant action.

The pace of the two plays is different. Although both have the standard three-part pattern of intro, exposition and a quick finish, the finish in Yama Bushi is a lot quicker than that of Kamabara. In both cases, the speed with which the play concludes is appropriate to the subject. The husband in Kamabara is a methodically lazy man and so the resolution to his dilemma and his trek into the hills is likewise a bit slow, whereas the snappy conclusion of Yama Bushi works well with both the rashness of the two men and the quickness of their adversary. Still, as a quick finish is the desired way to end kyogen, I feel that Yama Bushi's is the more satifactory of the two.

Concerning parallels between the one-liners in these two plays and any other past/recent jokes, the only comparison that I have to the husband's persistent claim that he is going to kill himself is Fred Sanford, in Sanford and Son, who had a tendency to feign a heart-attack when things weren't going his way. In Yama Bushi, there is a joke about a woman that the priest saw visit his servant. The servant replies that it wasn't a woman; it was his aunt. That is a similar pattern to the classic "That was no lady; that was my wife."