Whether in academic research or in the media, when talking about Japanese stage-arts rakugo does not find much attention, possibly also due to its comedic character. Rakugo has however had a great influence on Meiji-literature and has been the topic of many recent TV series. In 2019 there are more rakugo performers than ever in the history of the art.

In order to fully understand what influence rakugo has had past the Meiji Restoration, we must understand the mechanisms that have propelled the art to its current status: In this panel we will present a thorough analysis of rakugo’s post-Meiji history.

The first rakugo boom occurred shortly before the turn of the 19th century with transliterations in newspapers and magazines, which made the art widely known and immensely popular and influenced many authors of the time.

The arrival of TV sets throughout Japan in the 1950s created a second boom: rakugo stories were now broadcast into homes across Japan and many young men endeavoured to take up the profession.

Finally, at the start of the 21st century, various TV and print media utilised rakugo as a topic to carry their stories, triggering the interest of new audiences that previously had not been in contact with the art. We intend to show how rakugo managed to graduate from its cosy neighbourhood venues at the end of the Edo-period, evolving into an art whose most famous performers can today fill venues entertaining thousands of audience members.

Miya and Abe will give their presentations in Japanese.

The sokkibon-boom of the Meiji 20-30s (1887-1906) and its influence on rakugo and other arts

Nobuaki Miya（Waseda University）

In 1884, Tōkyō Haishi Shuppansha published San’yūtei Enchō’s Kaidan Botandōrō (A Ghost Story: Tales of the Peony Lantern) as transcribed by the stenographer Wakabayashi Kanzō. It was Japan’s first shorthand book: sokkibon. Seeing Kaidan Botandōrō’s great success, not publishers started to publish transliterated stories of only Enchō but other rakugoka such as Danshurō Enshi I, Shunkintei Ryūō I. Yamato Shinbun, which had featured a serialization of Enchō’s Matsu no misao bijin no ikiume (Buried Alive: The Chaste Beauty of the Pines) from its first edition on October 7th, 1886, became one of the newspapers with the highest circulation. In order to keep up, other newspapers also started featuring sokki-transliterations.

In 1889, Kinransha published Hakkyaen, a journal solely dedicated to sokki-stories. With Hyakkaen’s success, similar journals such as Hanagatami, Azuma Nishiki popped up and Bungei Kurabu, the most influential literary journal of the Meiji Period featured sokki in every issue post September 1897.

This paper looks into the sokkibon-boom of 1887-1906, explaining their distribution and analysing their influence on the rakugo and kōdan artists at the time.

The 1960-70 rakugo boom and its consequences

Sarah Stark（Ghent University）

The time between 1955 and 1975 is often referred to as the Golden Age of rakugo. With more and more radios and TV sets installed in households nationwide, the art became popular in all of Japan. A side effect was that rakugoka rather earned money with broadcasting stations than performing at the yose for a handful of coins. Many skilled performers did only appear at the yose for New Year shows and consequently, the quality of yose performances declined.

Seeing rakugo on TV, more and more young men wanted to take up the profession and eventually the number of newcomers was so high that masters (shin’uchi) were ordered to no longer take in new apprentices (deshi). By the early 1970s, there were so many performers, that the Rakugo Kyōkai’s chairman Kosan V decided that promotions to master (shin’uchi) should no longer happen in solo shows, but in groups of ten. Enshō and his disciples opposed mass-promotion, asserting that skills where more important than the number of years in the job.

Kosan V’s decision caused the biggest schism in the history of rakugo, but also was a trigger for performers to rethink their approach to the art.

The post-2000 rakugo-boom

Tatsuo Abe（Hitotsubashi University）

In the 1990s, Tokyo’s rakugo world was stagnating to the degree that media reported in 1997 Shinjuku’s Suehirotei was in danger of closing.

At the time, there were few opportunities of exposure to rakugo on radio or TV, and it seemed as if rakugo’s decline steadily continued. However, the situation gradually changed in the 2000s

This change was not caused by the media broadcasting rakugo stories, it was rather prompted by the advent of media contents which had integrated rakugo into their storyline that played a significant role in the revival of the art.

Stories focused on rakugoka and the people surrounding them, such as the 2005 TV series Tiger and Dragon, the 2007 NHK Renzoku Terebi Shōsetsu Chiritotechin as well as the expansion of the 2010s manga Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū into other media - in this case an anime television and life-action series adaption - all triggered audiences’ interest in rakugo and enticed them to frequent rakugo performances.

The rakugo world continued to proactively integrate new audiences which had no connection to the Golden Age of rakugo in the Shōwa era. Concurrently, the number of rakugo performers reached an all-time high.

This paper will investigate a new generation of rakugo productions, using the Shibuya Rakugo series as an example of how new audiences were generated from among a part of the public with potential interest in rakugo.