Owarai

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You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (December 2011) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,290 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:日本お笑い史]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ja|日本お笑い史}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Owarai (お笑い) is a broad word used to describe Japanese comedy as seen on television. The word owarai is the honorific form of the word warai (by adding o- prefix), meaning "a laugh" or "a smile". Owarai is most common on Japanese variety shows and the comedians are referred to as owarai geinin or owarai tarento. Presently^[when?] Japan is considered to be in an "owarai boom", and many minor talents have been finding sudden fame after a gag or skit became popular.