Stand-up parodies Japan's far right at packed venues
Guardian
It is standing room only at a theatre in central Tokyo as a stocky man in full military garb takes his place in front of a huge rising-sun flag.
Eyes front, he belts out the first few lines of the national anthem. Suddenly, his creditable baritone transforms into a high-pitched whine in a bold and deliberate mark of disrespect for the flag, this venerated symbol of Japanese nationalism.
His audience, meanwhile, is falling about.
The man's name is Minoru Torihada, and his comic antics are the nearest today's Japan gets to cultural insurrection. Torihada (it means goose pimples in Japanese) looks and sounds convincingly like the far-right politicians he parodies.
Here's his webpage: http://www.torihada.com/
