ABSTRACT
This chapter explores contemporary comedies about Norwegian and Japanese manhood in crisis. Norsemen (2016) is a Norwegian comedy series about a group of vikings living in Southern Norway around the year 790 C.E., and the film Samurai Shifters (2019) features a community of samurai living in the Himeji domain of Japan in the 1680s. Both comedies have a common project to playfully defamiliarise contemporary societal expectations concerning masculinity. They achieve this by taking contemporary pressures related to manhood and incongruously staging them in a past dominated by militaristic, hegemonic hierarchies. We ask: What dimensions of modern masculinities do these comedies explore? Are there any resonances across national settings? We argue that both comedies focus on the impossible imperatives of modern ‘caring,’ ‘sensitive’ manhood in the context of work and family life. However, while the Norwegian series sneeringly dismisses the ‘excesses’ of New Manhood as politically correct, the Japanese comedy light-heartedly affirms its egalitarian values.
