Sandwichman (owarai)

Sandwichman (サンドウィッチマン) is a Japanese comedy duo (owarai kombi) and host consisting of Mikio Date and Takeshi Tomizawa from Grape Company.

They are from Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, Tōhoku region of Japan, and the duo was formed in September 1998.

However, Tomizawa continued to solicit Date to become a comedian with him for five years, and they finally formed a duo and moved to Tokyo for dream in 1998.

After moving to Tokyo, they named their duo name to "Oyafuko" and "Money and Fist" for a while, but the public did not recognize them, and they formed the trio "Sandwich Man" with Tsutomu Hamada, a colleague from their first agency, Horipro.

The reason for the name was that the slender Hamada sandwiched between the larger Date and Tomizawa looked like a sandwich.

After only one year, Hamada left the group, but they did not return to their original name and have been active together ever since.

For years, the two did not receive much recognition and continued to smolder with few jobs.

With little money to spare, they lived together in a small apartment.

After a long period of underachievement, they began appearing on the Nippon TV popular comedy program “The God of Entertainment” around 2005.

They were the champions of M-1 Grand Prix 2007 and the runners-up of King of Conte 2009.

Depending on the material they perform, Date sometimes ad-libs “bokeh” into the performance.

They met at the rugby football club of Sendai Commercial High School in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture.

It was a boys' school and a club with a strict hierarchical relationship.

Although it was not a strong team, they worked out physically together with the rugby football team members and were always thinking of ways to make the “very scary but funny seniors” laugh in the club room.

After graduating from high school, Date went to work for a manufacturer of nursing care products, such as wheelchairs.

Tomizawa, on the other hand, dreamed of becoming a comedian and formed a comedy duo with another person while working part-time.

Then, on December 23, 2007, they won the M-1 Grand Prix and quickly became one of the most successful comedians.

Even after they became successful comedians, they continued to cherish their hometown of Sendai and Tōhoku region.

Their first regular radio program was FM Izumi's Sandwichman's Radio Let Me Do It! broadcasting in Izumi Ward, Sendai City since July 2007.

They have appeared on the show with no pay since that time, and they say that they still does so even today, after winning M-1 Grand Prix and other breakthroughs.

they also say that even though they receive many offers for work in Tokyo, they give priority to work in Sendai.

When the March 11, 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami occured, they were at a fishing port in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture, filming a TV program.

After the biggest tremor they had ever experienced, the local TV crew urged them to climb a nearby mountain, and they narrowly escaped tsunami.

Thinking of what they could do to help Tōhoku region, they opened a “Tōhoku Spirit Donation Account” soon after the quake to help the affected areas.

Then, in a short period of about a month and a half, they collected donations amounting to about 300 million yen, which they were able to distribute and deliver to the six prefectures affected by the disaster by the end of May 2011.

Since then, they have continued to actively engage in support activities, such as visiting evacuation centers with relief supplies, selling charity T-shirts, and holding charity live concerts.

Sandwichman and his agency, Grape Company, Inc. are responsible for delivering donations directly to the prefectural governments of Miyagi Prefecture, Fukushima Prefecture, and Iwate Prefecture each year to support orphans and orphans of the disaster.

They continued to provide ongoing support, and by March 2022, the cumulative donations collected totaled over 500 million yen.

10 years after the earthquake, They began to think of “something tangible to support with the relief money,” and in 2022, at the suggestion of Kesennuma, donated a Portable Restroom Trailers to the city of Kesennuma.

This Portable Restroom Trailers was dispatched to Wajima, Ishikawa on the Noto Peninsula in January 2024 in the wake of the 2024 Noto earthquake, and was put to good use.

Sandwichman were popular for their high quality manzai and comedy, and the standard phrase “I don't know what you're talking about" by Tomizawa became their staple. Their well-written scripts are their charm, but sometimes Date in particular makes Tomizawa laugh by ad-libbing something that is not in the script. This is made possible by their close rapport and deep trust, and the audience enjoys watching Tomizawa's reactions. Comedy critic Larry Toda says that their manzai and comedy acts seem to play on the so-called “beta” or predictable, but they exquisitely shift it a bit, and that is what makes them so interesting. He attributes this to the fact that they have been honing their manzai skills day in and day out with the M-1 Grand Prix competition as their goal.

Although they look a little scary, they are actually good friends, and their manzai and skits, the content is often humorous, such as their conversational misunderstandings, and their style is characterized by never hurting people.

In traditional Japanese manzai, the style is often simply to hurt someone to get a laugh, and it was said that it is traditional for "tsukkomi" actor to hit "boke" actor on the head to get a laugh.

Even for TV personalities, those who spoke out unreservedly with venomous tongue against the world gained popularity.

In recent years, however, this style has come to be shunned.

Toyo Keizai Online wrote of them, “Sometimes comedians intentionally make fun of others to get a laugh, but the two Sandwichmen seldom do so.

The fact that they are clean and do not do anything to hurt others is one of the reasons why they are loved by everyone.”

They are very popular among the public in Japan not only because of their manzai and comedy, but also because of their good friendship and their continuous support for the disaster-stricken areas in Tōhoku region since immediately after the disaster in 2011.

In 2018, they were ranked first in the annual “Nikkei Entertainment” ranking of “Favorite Comedian”, beating Sanma Akashiya who had been number one for the previous 14 years.

Since then, they have become regulars at the top of the favorability rankings and have been ranked number one in the “Talent Power Rankings” in 2019, 2020 and 2023.