Word: takeshi
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...cool-for-the-room persona, more than his variegated talents, that make Beat Japan's man of the moment. Beat Takeshi has become the coolest kid in the gigantic gako (high school) that is Japan, and everyone wants to be just like him. He's sitting there, unflappable and detached and looking sharp in a Yohji Yamamoto suit amid the third-rate chaos swirling around him. That's how most Japanese want to see themselves. Their nation has become an economic and political farce. Feckless, forgettable Prime Ministers come and go. The moribund economy has come to resemble more...
This is Beat Takeshi country, this TV Asahi soundstage that looks like one part Vegas lounge and one part Starship Enterprise. In front of a long desk where Beat holds court is a large half dome with flashing neon lights. Behind him in cylindrical pods are a contorted mannequin's torso, several fake strands of DNA and blinking white Christmas tree lights. Flanked by lesser television personalities and second-tier celebrities, Beat Takeshi presides on TV Tackle as the highest of Japanese pop culture royalty, an imperious entertainer whose every twitch and tick and grunt and sniffle elicit commentary...
That's why Beat Takeshi, 54, has become the icon for Japan's troubled times. Think of David Letterman, Clint Eastwood, Dave Barry and Quentin Tarantino all rolled into one person?and then give that one person bumper-to-bumper, gavel-to-gavel, cover-to-cover, morning-till-evening omnipresence on any and all forms of media. He is a one-man entertainment conglomerate, and has been a dominant pop culture figure for more than 20 years. In addition to his seven TV shows, he has penned 71 volumes of satirical commentary, written poetry and reams of magazine columns...
...Beat Takeshi is one of them. Call them the Beat-en Generation. Even the arc of his own life story parallels that of Japan's postwar history: he grew up poor amid the ashes of World War II. He came of age during the postwar boom. He found himself during the bubble economy of the '80s and early '90s, when he relentlessly poked fun at a too-rigid society and rebelled against a benumbing hierarchy. And now, finally, like Japan itself, he has grown into a bloated, entertainment superpower, still funny, still possessing formidable hidden powers, but an epigone...
...stagecraft of Japan's noh theater?long, intricate courtly dramas written to entertain the royal family a thousand years ago. "A noh mask is a completely expressionless mask," he explains. "It's unnecessary for the actor to act dramatically. What the audience can see and interpret is limitless." Beat Takeshi is a modern manifestation of that noh mask: today's Japanese see in him whatever they want...