As part of promoting and celebrating other cultures at Elizabethtown College, “Feeling Edo through Rakugo and Kamikiri” was organized by the Department of Modern Languages and Asian Studies program. The event, held on Saturday, Feb. 15, featured traditional Japanese rakugo performances by both students and professionals, as well as a segment for a professional kamikiri demonstration.
Assistant Professor of Japanese Nobuaki Takahashi helped organize the event. “I teach at the Middlebury College Summer Language School from time to time, and the current director, Professor Hatasa, brought the storytelling and paper-cutting performing arts to the Japanese language education,” Takahashi said.
“Two years ago, the College, with the mission of promoting Asian Studies, applied to the Undergraduate International Studies and Foreign Languages (UISFL) grant. In so doing, the Asian Studies faculty included requests, such as establishing a Chinese program here.” Kazumi Hatasa, from the Japanese School at Middlebury College, invited the performers from Japan for the event and helped to explain the performances’ unique styles during the event.
The art of rakugo is a traditional Japanese storytelling performance, which is typically comedic. “Rakugo is very well-known in traditional performing arts,” Takahashi said. “Rakugo is commonly shown on TV or in other media, so almost all Japanese people know rakugo.” There is one performer telling the stories, seated on a cushion onstage. If there are multiple characters, the single performer will portray all of the characters during the performance while changing the voice or mannerisms of the different characters. While performing, the actor cannot stand on his or her feet but only on his or her knees. Also, the actor’s only props during the performance are a fan and a tenugui, a Japanese towel used to act out various objects.
Similar to rakugo, kamikiri is another style of performance involving a single performer, seated on a cushion. During the performance, the player receives a request from the audience to create an image cut out of a piece of paper. The image is chosen by the audience and is not known beforehand to the performer.
In addition, the image is created by the performer cutting it directly out of the paper without drawing an outline. Usually, the act lasts only a few minutes, and the image is presented to the audience via a projector. After one image is created, the performer asks for other image requests from the audience. Sometimes in the kamikiri performance, the performer will prepare several images beforehand – landscapes, objects and people – to show a story, usually complimented by background music.
“Kamikiri is not as recognized as rakugo,” Takahashi said. “I did not know kamikiri until 2008, when I first taught at the Middlebury College Summer Program and saw Master Hayashiya Niraku. I was deeply fascinated with it and I actually do kamikiri as a hobby now. What’s interesting is that kamikiri is categorized as a traditional performing art, but unlike rakugo and other arts with over 300 years of history, kamikiri probably has about 100 years of history. It started out to promote western-style scissor sales when the Samurai era was over and western materials were introduced in Japan.”
For the rakugo performances, students from Etown as well as Dickinson and Franklin and Marshall (F&M) Colleges performed short acts. Some performances featured multiple characters that the students had to act out, as well as performances involving the fan and towel props. In addition to the students’ performances, professional rakugo performer Ryutei Saryuu visited the College and showed his talent in longer rakugo performances.
Saryuu’s storytelling technique focuses on classical stories, known as koten. Professional kamikiri performer Hayashiya Niraku also performed at the event. Niraku has been performing kamikiri on stage since 1991 and is one of few professional kamikiri performers in the world.
In preparation for the rakugo readings, the students who performed had to rehearse for the show. “Since each story is short, there is a lot of acting and expressing themselves non-verbally that may be required,” Takahashi said. “I had some individual practice sessions with some of them. We met twice as a group – one on Wednesday before the event and one in the morning of the day of the event as a dress rehearsal.” All of the students chosen to perform had varying experience in Japanese. “Some are first-year students and some are seniors with study-abroad experiences,” Takahashi said. “I think each student thought the performance was challenging, but not necessarily difficult.”
Takahashi found that events such as rakugo and kamikiri performances can relate to members of the Etown community just as much as to those familiar with Japanese culture. “There is a great deal of interest in Japanese culture in general, and typically, the motivation stems from pop culture such as anime, video games and pop music,” Takahashi said. “For some types of performing arts, such as the flower arrangement and tea ceremony, we have professional performers around here, in places such as Lancaster, York or Philadelphia.”
Through Takahashi’s connections to Middlebury College, he brought this unique event to Etown. “If you would like to see an authentic rakugo, you need to be at one of the major cities like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles,” Takahashi said. “For kamikiri, given that there are only a handful of professional performers, Etown was the second institution at which Master Hayashiya Niraku performed, other than Middlebury College.
Introducing this type of performing arts not only educates the audience with a wider variety of art forms from Japan, but also it was a very fruitful experience for Etown by inviting the Japanese language learners from F&M and Dickinson Colleges. Through this event, both faculty and students made some lateral connection between other institutions.”
