In the middle of the Meiji period (1868–1912) the expression ''rakugo'' first started being used, and it came into common usage only in the Shōwa period (1926–89).
Early rakugo has developed into various styles, including the shibaibanashi (芝居噺, theatre discourses), the ongyokubanashi (音曲噺, musical discourses), the kaidanbanashi (see kaidan; 怪談噺, ghost discourses), and ninjōbanashi (人情噺, sentimental discourses). In many of these forms the ''ochi'', which is essential to the original rakugo, is absent.
Rakugo has been described as "a sitcom with one person playing all the parts" by Noriko Watanabe, assistant professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature at Baruch College.
During the Edo period (1603–1867), thanks to the emergence of the merchant class of the chonin, the rakugo spread to the lower classes. Many groups of performers were formed, and collections of texts were finally printed. During the 17th century the actors were known as ''hanashika'' (found written as 噺家, 咄家, or 話家; lit. “storyteller”), corresponding to the modern term, ''rakugoka'' (落語家, lit. “person of the falling word”).
Before the advent of modern rakugo there were the kobanashi (小噺): short comical vignettes ending with an ochi, popular between the 17th and the 19th century. These were enacted in small public venues, or in the streets, and printed and sold as pamphlets. The origin of kobanashi is to be found in the ''Kinō wa kyō no monogatari'' (''Yesterday Stories Told Today'', ca. 1620), the work of an unknown author collecting approximately 230 stories describing the common class.
Among the more famous rakugoka of the Tokugawa Era were performers like Anrakuan Sakuden (1554–1642), the author of the ''Seisuishō'' (''Laughter to Chase Away Sleep'', 1628), a collection of more than 1,000 stories. In Edo (today's Tokyo) there also lived Shikano Buzaemon (1649–99) who wrote the ''Shikano Buzaemon kudenbanashi'' (''Oral Instruction Discourses of Shikano Buzaemon'') and the ''Shika no makifude'' (''The Deer's Brush'', 1686), a work containing 39 stories, eleven of which are about the kabuki milieu. Tatekawa Enba (1743–1822) was author of the ''Rakugo rokugi'' (''The Six Meanings of Rakugo'').
Kyōto was the home of Tsuyu no Gorobei (1643–1703), whose works are included in the ''Karakuchi tsuyu ga hanashi'' (''One-liners: Morning Dew Stories'', date of composition unknown), containing many word games, episodes from the lives of famous literary authors, and plays on the different dialects from the Tōkyō, Ōsaka, and Kyōto.
Of a similar structure is the ''Karakuchi gozen otoko'' (''One-liners: An Important Storyteller'', date of publication unknown) in which are collected the stories of Yonezawa Hikohachi, who lived in Ōsaka towards the end of the 17th century. An example from Yonezawa Hikohachi's collection:
{{quote |A man faints in a bathing tub. In the great confusion following a doctor arrives who takes his pulse and calmly gives the instructions: "Pull the plug and let the water out." Once the water has flown completely out of the tub he says: "Fine. Now put a lid on it and carry the guy to the cemetery."
For the poor man is already dead. The joke becomes clearer when one notes that a Japanese traditional bathing tub is shaped like a coffin.
Category:Japanese literature Category:Theatre in Japan Category:Japanese folk art Category:Japanese comedy and humour
ca:Rakugo de:Rakugo es:Rakugo fa:راکوگو fr:Rakugo ko:라쿠고 id:Rakugo it:Rakugo ja:落語 pl:Rakugo pt:Rakugo ro:Rakugo ru:Ракуго fi:Rakugo uk:Ракуго zh:落語This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
The World News (WN) Network, has created this privacy statement in order to demonstrate our firm commitment to user privacy. The following discloses our information gathering and dissemination practices for wn.com, as well as e-mail newsletters.
We do not collect personally identifiable information about you, except when you provide it to us. For example, if you submit an inquiry to us or sign up for our newsletter, you may be asked to provide certain information such as your contact details (name, e-mail address, mailing address, etc.).
When you submit your personally identifiable information through wn.com, you are giving your consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as set forth in this Privacy Policy. If you would prefer that we not collect any personally identifiable information from you, please do not provide us with any such information. We will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to third parties without your consent, except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy.
Except as otherwise disclosed in this Privacy Policy, we will use the information you provide us only for the purpose of responding to your inquiry or in connection with the service for which you provided such information. We may forward your contact information and inquiry to our affiliates and other divisions of our company that we feel can best address your inquiry or provide you with the requested service. We may also use the information you provide in aggregate form for internal business purposes, such as generating statistics and developing marketing plans. We may share or transfer such non-personally identifiable information with or to our affiliates, licensees, agents and partners.
We may retain other companies and individuals to perform functions on our behalf. Such third parties may be provided with access to personally identifiable information needed to perform their functions, but may not use such information for any other purpose.
In addition, we may disclose any information, including personally identifiable information, we deem necessary, in our sole discretion, to comply with any applicable law, regulation, legal proceeding or governmental request.
We do not want you to receive unwanted e-mail from us. We try to make it easy to opt-out of any service you have asked to receive. If you sign-up to our e-mail newsletters we do not sell, exchange or give your e-mail address to a third party.
E-mail addresses are collected via the wn.com web site. Users have to physically opt-in to receive the wn.com newsletter and a verification e-mail is sent. wn.com is clearly and conspicuously named at the point of
collection.If you no longer wish to receive our newsletter and promotional communications, you may opt-out of receiving them by following the instructions included in each newsletter or communication or by e-mailing us at michaelw(at)wn.com
The security of your personal information is important to us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during registration and once we receive it. No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100 percent secure, however. Therefore, though we strive to use commercially acceptable means to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
If we decide to change our e-mail practices, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we think appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it.
If we make material changes to our e-mail practices, we will notify you here, by e-mail, and by means of a notice on our home page.
The advertising banners and other forms of advertising appearing on this Web site are sometimes delivered to you, on our behalf, by a third party. In the course of serving advertisements to this site, the third party may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser. For more information on cookies, you can visit www.cookiecentral.com.
As we continue to develop our business, we might sell certain aspects of our entities or assets. In such transactions, user information, including personally identifiable information, generally is one of the transferred business assets, and by submitting your personal information on Wn.com you agree that your data may be transferred to such parties in these circumstances.