![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
While I'm thinking about it . . .
Oct. 31st, 2007 06:56 pmThe new NHK (public television) series - this is the 15 minutes each day for a year one - is interesting. The star is a young woman, typically somewhat nerdily outfitted, who has a very expressive wry smile. Mitsuko says she thinks it is set in the '70s. Anyway, the background for this one is that she has come from somewhat out in the country into the big city of Osaka to seek fame and fortune and such - and she adores rakugo. Rakugo, for those who don't know, is a Japanese tradition - comic monologues, basically. According to some of the history I've been looking at, it has about 400 years of history, and everyone seems to cite the magic figure of 300 classic plots. I have yet to find a list or such, but . . .
Anyway, she stumbles into staying with a rakugo master and his somewhat odd student. The student hasn't done a show in three years, the master is trying to get over stage fright through alcoholism, and she has odd flashes of incredible fantastic scenes (shades of Walter Mitty).
The fun part, for me, is the little bits and pieces of rakugo history and background that are coming in. For example, the traditional rakugo now has a single narrator who comes out to a small kneeling desk, settles on the cushion, and claps a small wooden block on the desk to mark the start of his tale. He has two props - a folding fan and a handkerchief. He then tells a story, at length, playing all the parts, and usually aiming at a final "fall" - the joke at the end. And almost always, he is telling a story that everyone knows quite well.
Let's see. Other complications in rakugo? Well, if you go to a rakugo show, it will run all afternoon. And apparently the juniors start the show, with increasingly senior people running later. And it is a point of pride that no one tells the same story during that session (which means that the senior people had best have one more story tucked away just in case someone happens to use their planned one!).
Something to keep an eye on.
Anyway, she stumbles into staying with a rakugo master and his somewhat odd student. The student hasn't done a show in three years, the master is trying to get over stage fright through alcoholism, and she has odd flashes of incredible fantastic scenes (shades of Walter Mitty).
The fun part, for me, is the little bits and pieces of rakugo history and background that are coming in. For example, the traditional rakugo now has a single narrator who comes out to a small kneeling desk, settles on the cushion, and claps a small wooden block on the desk to mark the start of his tale. He has two props - a folding fan and a handkerchief. He then tells a story, at length, playing all the parts, and usually aiming at a final "fall" - the joke at the end. And almost always, he is telling a story that everyone knows quite well.
Let's see. Other complications in rakugo? Well, if you go to a rakugo show, it will run all afternoon. And apparently the juniors start the show, with increasingly senior people running later. And it is a point of pride that no one tells the same story during that session (which means that the senior people had best have one more story tucked away just in case someone happens to use their planned one!).
Something to keep an eye on.
