Word: takeshi
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...mother, Saki Kitano, pushed her children hard. She wanted them all to study engineering in college, and Beat did, enrolling at the prestigious Meiji University before growing restless and dropping out. He drove taxicabs, worked in a strip joint and then decided to try his hand at comedy. "Takeshi, you are the son of a house painter," his brother admonished him. "You will never make it in entertainment." Beat just nodded when he heard this warning. He didn't say a word...
...early comedy, of course, rather than the cinematic flourishes that installed the Beat Takeshi myth in the public consciousness. Before the designer suits and aviator glasses there was skit comedy and Beat's manic variety show persona. Beat loves to reminisce about the absurdity of some of his earlier sketches. "We put 40 or so talents in a bus and attached it to a crane above the water," Beat says. The passengers had to answer questions. If they answered correctly, the crane lifted them up. If they answered incorrectly, they were let down a notch closer to the water...
That's the attitude that fostered the cult of Beat Takeshi, which now has as strong a hold on its disciples as any religion. And there really is a cult. The Takeshi Gundan, a group of some 100 apprentice comics, young men who adore Beat and emulate him, sprang up in 1983. They gathered at a yakiniku restaurant in Tokyo's Shinjuku district?a popular Takeshi haunt?waiting for a glimpse of their master. The restaurant became known as the holy shrine to Beat; his followers began to call him tono, or "lord." "We waited outside for four hours, just...
...already like him. In the end, that is really Beat's appeal. The jokes, sure, make people laugh. The cool tough guy, sure, people find sexy. But beneath the crafted image is an everyman that Japanese males would like to see when they peer into a mirror. "Takeshi's machismo is kind of nostalgic for many men," says Yoko Tajima, a professor of English literature and women's studies who appears on his TV Tackle show. "But his real strength is that he never forgets his starting point. He is a loser in a sense." He had a lonely childhood...
...clip from Brother at the end of the TV Tackle show, Beat pretends to fire a gun. "What a scary man," he jokes. Picking up on the cue to flatter the star, fashion designer and panelist Kansai Yamamoto says, "The real core of today's issue is the way Takeshi lives." In the end, it's all about Beat. For Beat Takeshi's world has become as hierarchical as the society he has plundered for so much of his comedic loot. And Beat Takeshi's rebellion, which started as a genuinely subversive take on Japan, has become as ritualized...