Osaka the emotional communication city & Rakugo the emotional entertainment


Osaka is the third biggest city next to Tokyo and Yokohama, and a city of citizens since the Edo period. Osaka has two different faces of citizens’ energy.


One is the energetic face. This face has been made by the economic development since the Meiji period. The representation of the energetic face is Doton-bori which is a riverside town with big neon billboards. Almost all foreign travelers in Osaka visit there and take their own photographs in the background of the big neon billboards. This town will excite you, and you will exult at its chaotic energy.

 

The Osaka Museum of housing and living


The other is an emotional (“joucyo-yutakana” in Japanese) face with good relationship with others made by multilayered day-to-day verbal and nonverbal communications between people. It had its peak in the Edo period. Although it shrank by getting pushed by the energetic face after the Meiji period, you can touch the fragments of the emotional face at The Osaka Museum of housing and living.

It has a townscape of wooden houses with tile-roofs in a building. And this townscape shows the look in the latter part of the Edo period when Osaka was called “Naniwa”. Compared with exulting at Doton-bori you may have to be alert to trivial things. You can wander around the town and you can find many never-seen-before daily goods of the emotional face.



As the town is covered with a dome, it never rains. Moreover the lighting facility makes dawn to sunset while a short time. It brings wandering you to a wonder land.

There is a public bathhouse, a book-store, a daily-goods-store, a store of Japanese wooden clogs and so on. These are adjoining each other. And all of the stores and these daily goods exhibitions show the close relationship among people including store owners and residents. Sewing these stores and seeing a lot of daily goods in those days, the old Japanese atmosphere will charm you. Foreign travelers, including women wearing “kimono”, looked happy when I visited there. In the dome there might be something silent which turns off their mind switches for making them happy. Once upon a time Osaka was the town of good emotion. Maybe those houses and daily goods have the aroma of the emotion which was built up by people.


Rakugo; the Japanese cosmic storytelling 


Rakugo is the traditional Japanese cosmic storytelling. It was created by citizens without a representative patron in the Edo period. It showed the proof of abundance of the citizens in the Edo period. People at the time had kept their relaxed minds and their economic allowances to enjoy rakugo and to find out some cosmic, funny and humorous episodes during their day-to-day lifetime.

Rakugo is a storytelling performance by only one storytelling performer. Many characters enter on stage in a rakugo story, and one rakugo performer plays all the characters. Rakugo in Japanese characters is “raku”( falling) and “go”(telling), the end of a rakugo story has a falling expression which is the punchline, a cosmic gap ( “Ochi” in Japanese) from the story from the beginning. The cosmic gap draws out laughter from the audiences.

In addition rakugo is a cosmic story which is completed by the audiences’ full imaginations. Laughing in rakugo depends on funny feeling rather than teasing.

Rakugo is a participative entertainment in the audiences’ mind. Except for the barrier between languages, between cultures or between mechanisms of thinking, rakugo fits the recent global trend of experiencing the desire of people. It may be sure that the feeling of “ochi”, a cosmic gap (a punchline) is sort of far from old foreigners’ familiar cosmic point. However all people need good emotion between people. Moreover, laughing is an important elements among good emotions. From that view point, rakugo has the possibility to become popular in the global society. If a rakugo performer makes an international rakugo story overcoming the barrier between languages, cultures and mechanisms of thinking, rakugo will radiate in the world.

A great rakugo performer performs his rakugo in English on YouTube. Check it out please. 

A Great Rakugo Performer, Shijaku: White Lion

And a Scottish female rakugo performer explains rakugo on YouTube. Check it out please.

Rakugo Stories Episodes

I will show a very short rakugo story. I want you to find a falling cosmic gap at the end of the story. There are two characters, a master of a store and his employee, they are played by only one rakugo performer.  


“There is a skinflint. As he is too stingy he probably doesn’t like to use anything of his own.

Master: Hey, Sadakichi! Go to our neighbor and borrow a hammer. I want to hammer a nail into this pillar.

Sadakichi: Master! I came back. Our neighbor lent me nothing.

Master: Why not?

Sadakichi: He asked me a question; “Are you going to hammer a wooden nail or an iron nail? “. So I answered; “it is an iron nail”. “Hitting an iron nail by my iron hammer will wear down my iron hammer, so I won’t lend it to you.” He told me so.

Master: You are kidding! He is too stingy. Enough! Forget it! It’s ok not to borrow a hammer from such a skinflint.

Sadakichi: What should we do?

Master: Use my hammer.”


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