I was doing research for another post a while back, and found something a bit…unusual. It was an old Japanese scroll about farting.
No, you didn’t misread that last sentence. The whole scroll, which is called He-Gassen (“The Fart Battle”) is just about people farting. Farting at other people, farting at cats, farting off of horses, farting into bags; just farting everywhere.
Why? I couldn’t really tell you. I’ve tried to do some research but, believe it or not, academic literature on Japanese farting is surprisingly few and far between.
I found some relevant articles on my old university’s academic databases, but the only way I could obtain them would be to request them printed out and go pick them up. Which, you know, isn’t something I really want to do.
I can only imagine what it would be like if I went back to school to pick up my fart literature:
“Hi, how can we help you?”
“I’m here to pick up some articles I put on hold.”
“Sure, what are they about?”
“Well, they’re, um, about farting.”
“…”
I did find out enough to know that this isn’t the only farting scroll out there in existence – in fact, in the 90s, a collection of fart scrolls sold for $1,500 at the famous Christie’s auction house. I am not making this up.
I also found out that the famous uikyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi also dabbled in fart art, painting a piece depicting dudes farting at each other.
Perhaps the greatest piece of this farting scroll is a giant panorama of four dudes farting into a building, and the chaos ensuing within. Click on the picture below for the full-sized version because really, it’s not something you wanna miss out on.
In the end, I think I tried to read too far into this. I kept expecting to find some deep cultural explanation as to why these guys made whole scrolls about farting. But I think it really just boils down to one universal truth: farts are funny.
We can pretend that our senses of humor are more sophisticated than that, but let’s face it: when somebody lets one rip, you’re going to chuckle.
And, as if this wasn’t enough, we made a video for this too. Conspiracy? Maybe. Aliens? Definitely.
(Originally found on Naruhodo. You can find the rest of the fart scroll, in its entirety, on Waseda University’s website here.)
Saturday Timewaster is a weekly post that features Japanese videos, music, images, or games that will certainly waste your time (some weeks more than others). We hope you enjoy!