Disclaimer: Some of the images on the scroll are inappropriate (although if you really want to see images of people having a flatulence war, images of bare bottoms and few bare, feminine tops, will probably not bother you much), so for the sake of people who have no intention of watching nearly naked people farting at each other, you’ll have to actually click the links to see the images.
Have you ever found yourself innocently watching Youtube videos, but slowly, surely find yourself creeping into the weird part of Youtube through the continuous clicking of related videos? I had a moment like that, except it was on Google, and a combination unholy search strings. I was eventually led to this article about Japanese fart scrolls.
Apparently, Waseda University uploaded a scroll from the Edo period of Japan called 屁合戦 (Hegassen), or “The Fart War”. Naturally, since we live in the age of the Internet, this spread like wildfire. Seriously, if you run a simple Google search for “Japanese Fart Scrolls,” you’ll find tons of hits, and that’s only in English!
For those of you who don’t wish to look at the scroll, here’s a summary of what it contains: people farting. I mean farting everywhere. Uprooting trees with their farts, making people levitate with their farts, exploding small buildings with their farts, blowing away cats with their farts, etc. In one image, a group of people try to use a table turned on its side as a barricade to protect them from the flatulence, but the farts of their enemies burst right through the table!
Aside from having an immature laugh at these scrolls, I think they teach us two very important things.
1.) The Japanese have been wacked for centuries. And here I thought they were “normal” until their defeat in WW2. Guess I was wrong.
2.) Fart jokes are funny, and they always have been. When someone farts, we laugh whilst holding our noses. You can’t tell me that you’re too mature to laugh when someone unexpectedly lets one rip.
So, that’s my interesting bit of insight for the day. Don’t try that stuff at home!
