What does 突っ込み Tsukkomi mean?
Tsukkomi (突っ込み) is the jab that answers the boke in manzai comedy. Both role names are ordinary words: a thrust, and the dazed state of jet lag.
- Written
- 突っ込み (tsukkomi)
- Literally
- A thrust or jab. In manzai comedy it is the partner who points out the other's mistakes and feigned stupidity and keeps the routine moving; the other partner is the boke.
- As slang
- Neither tsukkomi nor boke is an insult as a comedy role. Outside comedy, boke can be one: dictionaries list fool and senility among its senses, so calling a person boke is rude.
- In anime
- Outside the stage, tsukkomi also means a jab or dig, so a character snapping back at someone's nonsense is doing the tsukkomi's job in the dictionary's manzai sense.
Tsukkomi and boke are the two roles in manzai, the Japanese two-person stand-up form. The boke says or does something foolish, and the tsukkomi points it out; JMdict glosses them as the funny man and the straight man.
The words
突っ込み comes from the verb meaning to thrust or plunge in. Jisho glosses 突 as stab, thrust and pierce. Daijisen lists charging forward, going deep into a subject, and, as its third sense, the manzai role that points out the boke's errors and feigned stupidity and mainly moves the routine along. It also uses the word for the pointing-out itself.
ぼけ is the noun from ぼける, to go dull or senile. Daijisen gives its first sense as that state, with 時差ぼけ, jet lag, and 連休ぼけ, the fog after a long holiday, as examples. Its second sense is the manzai role played dim against the tsukkomi. Its third, written 暈け, is the photographic blur from a shallow depth of field; JMdict glosses the related ボケ味 as bokeh, the term English-language photography uses for that quality.
The form behind them
Daijisen's entry for 漫才 describes manzai as a stage form in which two performers trade comic remarks, a modernization of the older 万歳 that arose in Osaka in the early Taisho period. The Nipponica entry on the same page credits Yokoyama Entatsu and Hanabishi Achako, who appeared in Osaka in 1930, as the originators of shabekuri, or talk-only, manzai. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten says the 漫才 spelling is reported to have been coined for a Yoshimoto Kōgyō publicity magazine in January 1932; the two Heibonsha encyclopedias say the spelling came into use from 1934, when it appeared on theater programs. The first is a single coinage; the second is general use.
The Kokugo Daijiten's earliest citation for boke as a comic role is from the comedian Furukawa Roppa, writing in 1948.
Why the English labels mislead
Straight man suggests a passive partner. The Japanese word names an action, a jab, and Daijisen gives the tsukkomi the job of advancing the routine. Funny man likewise misses that the boke's own name is the word for being dazed. The two labels describe what each partner does, not who gets the laugh. Rakugo, a stage form in which one performer voices several characters, has its own page.
Quick answers
What does tsukkomi mean?
A thrust or jab. In manzai comedy it is the partner who points out the other's mistakes and feigned stupidity and keeps the routine moving; the other partner is the boke.
Is tsukkomi an insult?
Neither tsukkomi nor boke is an insult as a comedy role. Outside comedy, boke can be one: dictionaries list fool and senility among its senses, so calling a person boke is rude.
What does tsukkomi mean in anime?
Outside the stage, tsukkomi also means a jab or dig, so a character snapping back at someone's nonsense is doing the tsukkomi's job in the dictionary's manzai sense.