The Forgotten Go Stone Move: Rakugo "Kasago" and the Showa Economy of Humanity

The Forgotten Go Stone Move: Rakugo "Kasago" and the Showa Economy of Humanity

The rakugo story "Kasa Go" is a funny yet slowly moving classic in which two men who love to play Go get into a big fight over a single "wait-and-see" move, and even fall out of love. At first glance, it is a funny story, but behind the story lies the subtleties of Japanese emotions concerning the "ambiguity of memory" and "giri (duty) and kin (money)".

In the mid-Showa period, especially during the period from postwar reconstruction to rapid economic growth, people were torn between old human relationships and new economic logic in a rapidly changing society. In the merchant world, "tsuke" (bill) still remained, and while the shift to a cash-based system was underway, subtle "memories" and "emotions" were strongly intertwined in the exchange of money. In other words, money was not just a number, but an afterimage of trust between people.

The exchanges in "Kasa Go" are just like that. More than just winning or losing a game of Go, the difference between "You said you waited for me at that time" and "No, I didn't say that" is not just a battle of wills. There is a mutual trust in each other's memory, that is, a desire to prove their existence by saying, "Please remember me properly.

In the interpretation of Basho Yanagiya (2nd generation), who performed this rakugo story, even when the scene was about to turn into laughter, he dared not to close the pause, but to take his time to make the audience think, "This is not a mere laughter. In other words, he tried to show this small dispute on the board as "a microcosm of life itself.

For the common people of the Showa period, money was not just a tool for economic activities, but also "an expression of human relationships. That is why the blurring of the memory of a bill meant the damage of friendship. The rakugo story "Kasago" reflects such realistic values of the common people, and questions the "relationship between memory, money, and human relations," which is now being lost.

In other words, "Kasago" is a story from the Edo period, but it is a performance that visualizes the economic ethics and principles of sentiment of the Showa period, and Umao's performance of it sublimates it into a rakugo story that "looks funny but does not end up being funny. What resides in classical rakugo is not the culture of the past, but "human nature that remains unchanged in the midst of change.