Allow me to slip in an extra episode here to bridge my thesis on Rakugo – not anything elaborate but a few words on certain individuals who left footmarks in the history of modern Rakugo. A comment on certain regional disparities in style might also interest you.

Yedo Era
Tokugawa Iyeyasu, the last of the warring lords, succeeded in cementing his shogunate to prevail as the first peace-seeking warrier/statesman in hundreds of years. His 15 generations of feudal shognate claimed a historical period of its own, “Yedo Era”, to linger on till the Meiji Era, the dawn of Japan’s modernization.

Japanese culture flourished in the Yedo Era; the descendants of Sorori Shinzaemon made a profession of jesting – hence, the art of story telling Rakugo. Stressful warlords nowhere in sight any longer, the Rakugo storytellers sought their customers in the public.

From the Genroku period onwards, Japan cultivates all forms of art – theater, music, ways of tea and flowers, literature, and you name it.
Rakugo claimed its place in the grand cultural renaissance in modern Japan. Like other forms of art, Rakugo followed its course in the process of evolution.

Sanyutei Encho
Atop the evolution was a Yedo commoner Izumi Jirokichi, or latter-day Sanyutei Encho, said to be the founder of modern Rakugo. In the strict sense of the term Rakugo, jesters before Encho were no Rakugo storytellers at all. It was only at and since the time of Sanyutei Encho that the modern art of storytelling came to assume the name Rakugo. Hence, “No Rakugoka before an’ after Encho”, as goes the saying in the world of Rakugo.

As I’m one of great fans of the virtuoso narrator Kokontei Shinsho, so are others of other master storytellers – each leading a “house” of his own. Incidentally, the “houses” may be compared to schools or sects that have functioned as a medium for competition in various forms of art in Japan- a process of artistic refinement, so to speak. Some houses do better than others in, for instance, more laugh-provoking stories; while others feature stories of more theatrical nature in the image of Kabuki, etc.

Shinsho, for instance, is a genius storyteller in the sense that he “tells as he goes” choosing words and phrases that he finds suitable at each and every stage he performs. Contrary is the style of Katsura Bunraku, another master narrator of his own rights, who has his stories carefully woven, word by word, phrase by phrase, so that he clocks each story roughly the same.

Yedo (Tokyo) and Osaka
A few lines should do in passing on two distinct styles or traditions in Rakugo, namely, Yedo Rakugo and Osaka Rakugo.

Osaka, as you may know, features commerce, foods and public entertainment, while Tokyo tends to stress on sophistication, refinement and style. This subtle difference in popular culture finds expression in the appreciation of Rakugo – in the way the audience reacts to the performer and vice versa.

In a nutshell, the audience in Osaka laughs more at the way the narrator makes fun of himself than the line of the story itself, while in Tokyo the narrator pays little or no heed to ridiculing himself, concentrating in the articulation of the story itself.

That’s another way of saying Osaka Rakugo storytellers are trained to resort to varieties of means i.e. drums, shamisen (3-stringed instrument), sound effects, etc. on top of self-ridiculing body language of all sorts, whereas Tokyo storytellers require only entry tunes to the accompaniment of shamisen, fans and stage towels – relying solely only on the manner of speech and articulation.

The authentic art of Rakugo, therefore, survives in Tokyo – in the so-called Yedo Rakugo, a form of entertainment and an art of storytelling in the strictest sense of the term. That is why serious connoisseurs of Rakugo enjoy the taste of shades of difference in the ways the same stories are told by master storytellers.

Well, the next and concluding episode will feature a short but unique classic Rakugo titled “Atama Yama” (Mt. Head) rendered into English personally by me to show yet another aspect of Rakugo.