It’s the ‘Greatest Show,’ but Can It Play in Japan?

Moving “the Greatest Show on Earth” to the other side of the globe can have some vexing moments.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey opened its three-ring circus in Tokyo during the weekend, after a warm-up run on the northern island of Hokkaido, and thousands of Japanese thronged to the giant tent that crews erected in an abandoned rail yard.

Fans reacted warmly, even enthusiastically, to the glitzy spectacular during a dress rehearsal Friday night. But when 18 goofy baseball players came spilling out of a mini-car in a classic clown routine, it simply did not strike the audience as being all that funny.

“It doesn’t work here--it’s a little too close to reality,” said circus producer Kenneth Feld. “It’s too much like the subway.”

Feld said he had some trouble getting started in Japan, clearing bureaucratic obstacles to importing his cast of 16 elephants and 14 lions, not to mention the prancing ponies, the llamas, the so-called living unicorn and all the circus paraphernalia.

It took two weeks to get past customs with a shipment of sabers used in a Bulgarian sword balancing act because of tight controls on lethal weapons. One of the Japanese partners had to promise to lock the swords in his hotel room every night and return them to the big top in the morning.

Then there was a standoff over how officials would handle endangered species permits for some of the animals. And at first, the Japanese did not like the idea of allowing U.S.-grown timothy hay to be brought in, but Feld said that organizers triumphed after explaining how the right kind of fodder can be essential in keeping elephants regular.

Indeed, sanitation has been a major concern ever since organizers noticed people in the audience in Sapporo covering their noses during the grandiose promenade of pachyderms. They tackled that problem with deodorizers, a beefed up scooping staff and a new technique of individually bagged manure disposal.

Promoters decided to stage the circus in a huge $8-million, 7,000-seat vinyl tent, returning to the big top after three decades of performing at indoor arenas, once they discovered that Japan had no facilities with proper entryways. The closest they could come were sumo stadiums.

“The doors only accommodated sumo wrestlers,” Feld said. “They didn’t accommodate elephants, which are a lot larger.”

Uniquely American

Japan has its own home-grown circuses, and the Moscow Circus performs here regularly, but Feld and his Japanese associates think that Ringling Bros. has something uniquely American to offer. In fact, Feld announced plans Friday to open a Clown College in Tokyo, similar to the one his father founded 20 years ago.

The school, a joint venture with a Japanese health food concern, will offer a special stress management course for businessmen in addition to training professional clowns.

The circus will put on 94 performances in Tokyo before moving on to Osaka in western Japan in late September in its first overseas tour in about 20 years and the first ever to Japan.

Whether the Japanese will take to the extravaganza--with the price of admission between $30 and $40--remains to be seen. Ticket sales were disappointing during the Hokkaido leg of the tour, circus sources say, but Feld is upbeat about financial rewards in a market that has earned megabucks for American entertainers like Madonna and Michael Jackson.

“Everybody said, ‘The Japanese won’t react to your circus,’ ” Feld said. “But we’ve found that they have. Basically, the same things that get a laugh or appeal to the emotions in Americans, they get it here.”