When walking around town, you sometimes come across a local TV crew filming. Being interviewed directly is rare, but it is a familiar sight at events and festivals.
The technique often seen in today’s variety shows—“interviewing people on the street and presenting them in an amusing way”—is said to have been pioneered by Echizenya Hyota, who was active on television around the 1980s.
Echizenya Hyota overturned the prevailing notion on television at the time that “comedians make things funny.”
A lecture by Echizenya Hyota was held on September 28, 2024, as part of “Kurashiki Mirai K-juku,” held once a month at Ohara House Katalyzer. I attended as well.
Here is a report on the 46th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku.
The information presented was current when this article was published in November 2024. Please note that it may differ from current information.
What Is Kurashiki Mirai K-juku 2024: “A Guide to Omorogical Thinking”?
Kurashiki Mirai K-juku is a seminar created to connect school education with the local community.
It is held regularly as a place for exchange among business leaders, education professionals, and members of the public interested in the community and education.
A variety of speakers have taken the stage, and at the 45th and 46th sessions, Echizenya Hyota, who entertained television audiences, appeared.
About Echizenya Hyota
Echizenya Hyota has worked on the planning and writing of television programs, as well as appearing in them himself. He was the first “detective” on the long-running show “Detective! Night Scoop.”
When “Detective! Night Scoop” began in 1988, it was standard practice to feature comedians to make a program entertaining.
However, Echizenya Hyota established a technique for drawing out humor through interactions with ordinary people. Even without a budget or celebrities, he generated laughs through exchanges with people he met on the street and became highly popular.
The technique of generating laughs from ordinary people without using comedians has since been used on a variety of programs and has become widespread in today’s television industry.
Today, Echizenya Hyota works as a visiting professor and part-time lecturer, teaching at universities across Japan about “ways of thinking and methods in the field” based on his experience. His current positions are as follows.
- Kansai University, Faculty of Sociology Visiting Professor
- Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Visiting Professor
- Kochi University, Center for Innovation Visiting Professor
- Kyoto University of the Arts Visiting Professor
- Kyoto University of Foreign Studies Visiting Professor (Advisor to the President’s Office)
- University of Shizuoka Startup Creation Support Advisor
- Wakayama University, Faculty of Tourism Unconventional Lecturer
- Kyoto University Hennin Lecture Director & Navigator
- Tawara Etsuzan Head of the Mijuku-ryu School
- Jimon Jito Party Leader
- ACADEMIC VISION LLC Managing Member
The “Kyoto University Hennin Lecture,” held at Kyoto University, became a popular course, with more than 300 participants each time.
His wide-ranging activities also include working as a calligrapher under the name Tawara Etsuzan, producing documentary films, and serving as a planning director for onsen promotion in Wakayama City.
You can follow Echizenya Hyota’s latest activities on his independently launched web media outlet, Hyotimes.
How a Television Favorite Came to Live in the Mountains
Although Echizenya Hyota is now active in a wide range of fields, there was a time when he quit all his jobs and lived in the mountains for five years.
Why did he give up a stable television career and make a fresh start? And what exactly did he gain from his retreat in the mountains?
Let’s look back on Echizenya Hyota’s life.
What Was the “Comedy Style” Established by Echizenya Hyota?
Echizenya Hyota first appeared on television when he was a second-year university student working part-time at a production company.
On programs with limited budgets, it was difficult to bring in celebrities or comedians or build sets. After considering “how to make it entertaining” under those circumstances, he came up with the idea of “engaging people walking along the street.”
Echizenya Hyota had originally hoped to become a director, but he appeared on television himself to carry out that approach, actively interacting with people around town.
At the lecture, rare footage from the time was projected on a screen, and the audience burst into laughter.
Echizenya Hyota would make yankees compete in arm wrestling or jump rope with salarymen, making outrageous demands of ordinary people. But the people on the street often enthusiastically played along. The humor came from the fact that they weren’t professionals.
“The only people you shouldn’t mess with are yakuza. So I teased police officers,” he said. Footage of him approaching police officers was also shown, prompting another round of laughter.
“There were things that might get me in trouble if I did them today, but back then, we were all just having fun. When I was out on the street, people would come up to me because they could get on TV,” he recalled.
A Sense of Crisis Born on “Detective! Night Scoop”
An offer to appear on “Detective! Night Scoop” came to Echizenya Hyota, who had become a household favorite.
To bring out the best in the show’s concepts, he avoided relying on comedians and, through trial and error, helped make the program a success as its first detective. But as ratings rose, conservative voices emerged, saying, “We don’t want the show to lose its popularity.”
Contrary to Echizenya Hyota’s belief that “when things are going well, you should take risks because you can recover even if you fail,” the program gradually became more conservative.
“It would be easy to just keep going like this. But isn’t that a little wrong?”
Two Events That Gave Him the Push He Needed
He grew fed up with the program’s desire for stability and the plagiarism of ideas he had come up with, and began to wonder, “Is it really okay to keep things as they are?”
The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995 strengthened that feeling even further.
“Seeing the people of Kobe, who had suffered in the disaster, work hard to start over from zero gave me a push. I thought, ‘If I don’t have the strength to start over from zero, maybe there’s something wrong with me.’”
What gave him an even greater push was meeting folk singer Okabayashi Nobuyasu.
Okabayashi had suddenly disappeared from the spotlight in the early 1970s, at the height of his popularity as a singer.
After discussing his work concerns with Okabayashi, who had left the entertainment industry, Echizenya Hyota chose to quit “Detective! Night Scoop.”
Even in an ordinary job, I think it takes courage to resign or change careers. How much courage must it have taken for Echizenya Hyota, a well-known figure, to make that decision at the time?
What Nature Taught Him During His Retreat in the Mountains
Although Echizenya Hyota had quit most of his television work, he continued with just one program, “Hyota’s Doing Well,” broadcast on Fukui Television, in which he walked around Fukui Prefecture as the Wakasa Patrol Magistrate for Echizenya. It was a popular program that Echizenya Hyota planned and appeared in himself, and it recorded a peak audience rating of 30%. In 1994, it won the top prize in the Television Entertainment category at the Japan Commercial Broadcasters Association Awards.
However, the program’s format and techniques were copied by other shows, and his accumulated distrust eventually reached its limit.
He decided, “If I’m going to quit, I’ll quit everything,” disappeared from the public eye, and began his retreat in the mountains in 2003.
Here are a few episodes from the five years he spent living in the mountains, and what Echizenya Hyota learned from nature.
Why Deciduous Trees Shed Their Leaves
In the mountains, there were evergreen trees, which kept their leaves green all year round, and deciduous trees, which shed their leaves in autumn.
Echizenya Hyota thought of deciduous trees, “Their autumn leaves are beautiful, but they have the color of something on the verge of death,” and apparently preferred evergreens.
However, when the snowy season arrived, he realized the benefits of deciduous trees.
While snow piled up on evergreens and broke their branches, deciduous trees, having shed their leaves, did not accumulate snow and continued growing steadily, making it through the winter.
“Deciduous trees aren’t having someone else remove their leaves; they shed them themselves. And when those leaves fall around their roots, after a long time they become nutrients for the tree again, and the cycle continues.”
Echizenya Hyota thought the time when he first came to the mountains was the worst period of his life. But he reflects that nature taught him how the world is always in a cycle, just as day and night, summer and winter repeat.
The Story of the Cherry Saplings
While growing trees, Echizenya Hyota bought two kinds of cherry saplings.
One was bought from a specialist shop on the recommendation of an acquaintance. It was a fine sapling with a thick trunk and tall stature.
The other was bought at a home improvement store. Perhaps because it had been grown in poor conditions, it was diseased and looked likely to wither.
When he actually tried growing them, the cherry tree from the specialist shop bloomed beautifully at first, just as he had expected. But after a few years, the home improvement store’s cherry tree bloomed profusely despite its awkward shape, and now it has grown larger than the sapling from the specialist shop.
Precisely because the home improvement store’s sapling had grown in poor conditions, it desperately tried to survive, seeking water. Even when it encountered hard layers of soil, it found gaps and extended its roots, showing a tenacious will to survive.
“Even if you haven’t had a favorable environment, if you make a sincere effort to live, one day you’ll bloom. That’s why I encourage the students I teach to keep doing their best.”
Calligraphy Performance in New York
As he gradually recovered, surrounded by nature, what ultimately became a great source of support was the presence of his friends.
Projected on the screen was footage of calligrapher Tawara Etsuzan’s calligraphy performance. It showed Echizenya Hyota moving a large brush while running into various obstacles on the streets of New York.
Thanks to an artist friend who said, “Come to New York,” and a television station that paid his travel expenses, saying, “Let’s broadcast Echizenya Hyota doing his best in New York,” the calligraphy performance he had long dreamed of in New York became a reality.
Watching the footage from New York, the author was overwhelmed by the passionate performance. You could feel him pouring into his calligraphy the emotions he had carried through several years of continuing to engage with nature and himself.
His Return to the Public Eye: What He Gained from Five Years in the Mountains
After five years of retreating in the mountains, Echizenya Hyota finally reached the day he returned to the public eye. Around 20 of his classmates gathered, and an event was held to celebrate his return.
Footage from the event showed Echizenya Hyota performing calligraphy as a large crowd watched, along with children writing “Thank you” in calligraphy.
What Echizenya Hyota found after letting go of everything.
It was that “it is important to live your life as you see fit.”
As we grow older, we become caught up in the fixed idea that “we have to do things well,” and increasingly find ourselves acting with gains and losses in mind. But he says that by having the courage to live without forcing ourselves into a mold, we can see what truly matters.
“There are times when we feel we have to become adults, but can’t quite manage it, right? I think if we don’t accept that side of ourselves too, things will eventually become difficult. It’s a hard world to live in, but sometimes you can see things by quitting or letting go of something. So I hope everyone will keep doing their best to live.”
Perhaps encouraged by Echizenya Hyota’s words, some participants were moved to tears. It felt like a weighty message that could only be spoken by someone who had once let go of everything.
During the Q&A that followed, positive comments from participants filled the room, such as “I’ve been wondering whether to quit my job, but now I’ve made up my mind” and “I think I’ll try pursuing what I want to do,” creating a warm and optimistic atmosphere throughout the venue.
When I face difficulties, I too would like to remember Echizenya Hyota’s story.
From the Writer
The words that left the strongest impression on me in this lecture were, “The aspirations I had when I was young were gradually being replaced, without my realizing it, by a desire called stability.”
When I was a child, I too had countless things I wanted to try and dreams I wanted to fulfill. But as I grew older, I learned about reality, and many dreams slipped away without my noticing. I feel how difficult it is to stay true to one’s aspirations.
Listening to Echizenya Hyota, I felt that letting go of everything can also mean rediscovering your original intentions. I think making a decision takes courage, but I want to remember it as one option for protecting myself.
At the next Kurashiki Mirai K-juku session, Ohara Kenichiro, the ninth-generation head of the Ohara family, will speak on Saturday, December 7, 2024. A talk session featuring dialogue between high school students and adults is scheduled to be held.
For details, check the Ohara House Katalyzer website.
Articles about Ohara House Katalyzer
46th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku / A Guide to Omological Thinking Information
| Name | 46th Kurashiki Mirai K-juku / A Guide to Omological Thinking |
|---|---|
| Date | September 28, 2024 (Saturday) 1:00 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. |
| Location | 1-2-1 Chuo, Kurashiki City |
| Participation fee (tax included) | General: ¥4,000 Katalyzer members: ¥3,000 |
| Website | Ohara House Katalyzer |
What would you like to know about Kurashiki?
Enter a search term to find articles on this site
