Many comedians on Japanese television seem to hail from Osaka, sometimes referred to as Japan's ‘second city’. In spite of the importance of humour to Osakan identity, its centuries-old comic storytelling tradition has largely escaped the attention of Western scholars. Matthew Shores's groundbreaking study of Kamigata (Osaka) rakugo remedies this undeserved neglect. Lecturer in Japanese at the University of Sydney, Shores spent over a decade studying rakugo, a genre of professional comic storytelling that has drawn Japan's urban masses since the early modern period (1600–1868) and continues to attract audiences to this day.
Shores based this study of Osaka rakugo on historical research on the art from its origins as street performance in the early seventeenth century to the present; on insights gathered from performing and from participant observation as an unofficial disciple of Hayashiya Somemaru IV; and on immersion in video and audio recordings, story texts and attendance at live performances. The introduction briefly defines rakugo as a whole, and explains some of the features that distinguish the Kamigata tradition, such as the fact that it is hade, flamboyant, and that its stories depict eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Osaka merchant culture and parody its ethos. The first chapter provides background on this merchant culture and on Osaka identity, key factors in understanding the repertoire and Shores's argument regarding the nature of its satire.
Shores's thorough history of Kamigata rakugo, the first to appear in English, is a welcome addition to Japanese theatre history literature. His history includes information on individual storytellers, as well as translations of a few published comic story texts. A discussion of the rise of the Yoshimoto entertainment company and its preference for booking two-person manzai comedy acts more than rakugo in its theatres helps explain some of the challenges faced by Kamigata rakugo performers in the twentieth century. Shores brings his history chapter into the present with a section on how Kamigata rakugo has benefited from television, CDs and DVDs. (A timely ‘author's preface’ describes how some artists responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.)
The chapter on what constitutes a Kamigata rakugo story considers elements of performance practice such as music and props. It focuses on Kamigata rakugo's textual characteristics, i.e. its recurring characters, the length of stories, intertextuality (citation of kabuki and other performance genres within certain stories), and what he calls the ‘realism’ (pp. 120–4) of storytellers’ depictions of Osaka merchant households. Manzai has come to be identified with Osaka, and Shores helpfully devotes a few pages to explaining its relation to rakugo.
The interview that Shores conducted with his teacher, Somemaru, offering reflections about the art by an important contemporary performer, constitutes a valuable resource for scholars. In his conclusion, Shores cites such Western theorists as Foucault and Bakhtin to analyse how Kamigata rakugo's presentation of merchant culture is transgressive.
Shores's talent as a rakugo translator is evident in his frequent citations from individual stories to support his arguments throughout the book, as well as in the five Kamigata rakugo classics that he introduces and translates in Part II. He admits that he has created composite versions of these stories, which he has selected as representative examples of ‘colourful’ stories ‘geared toward Osaka audiences’ (p. 162). This approach may make them less useful as records of individual performances, but the translations effectively impart the stories’ atmosphere and humour. They are a delight to read.
In his enthusiasm to convey the feeling of Kamigata rakugo language, Shores uses many Japanese terms. No doubt through an oversight, a few of these (‘hamemono’ and ‘katagi’, for example) are missing English translations, and there is no glossary of terms. On the other hand, there are two appendices, one listing selected Kamigata rakugo titles, and another Kamigata storyteller lineage charts, both of which are useful starting points for a deeper dive into Kamigata rakugo.
Even more than the ‘satire and social mobility’ of the book's subtitle, it struck me that Shores's study was more concerned with overcoming a ‘second-city’ mindset, with proving the worth and even the superiority of Kamigata rakugo vis-à-vis its better known Edo (Tokyo) rival. In this well-researched introduction to its history, texts and performance practice, Shores successfully demonstrates that Kamigata rakugo is a Japanese cultural treasure in its own right, and in no way a lesser ‘second-city’ version of Edo rakugo.
