The Question of the Rebel Child - The Solitary Way of Danshi Tachikawa (1970s-80s)

The Question of the Rebel Child - The Solitary Way of Danshi Tachikawa (1970s-80s)

The question "What is rakugo?" posed by Tatekawa Danshi had a profound impact on the world of rakugo in the 1970s and 1980s. As the number of yose (parlors) and their audiences dwindled, the rakugo community was torn between the conservative faction that sought to preserve tradition and the innovative faction that sought new forms of expression. At a time when television had become the center of entertainment and variety was gaining strength, rakugo performers found themselves at a crossroads: whether to remain in the yose or to make a foray into television.

It was in this context that Danshi left the Rakugo Association and founded the Tachikawa school on his own. For him, a performance at a koza is a once-in-a-lifetime event, and he believed that even the same story should always have a different atmosphere. In contrast to the masters, who respected the tradition of the classics, Danshi insisted, "A storytelling must reflect the times. He was motivated by a sense of crisis that the art would die if it remained content with reenacting the classics.

This attitude overlapped with the cultural situation in postwar Japan, where values had diversified after the country's rapid economic growth. Should tradition be preserved or changed? This question is also true of Kabuki and Noh, but Danshi was the sharpest practitioner of this question in rakugo. Leaving the association meant isolation, but at the same time it was an act of demonstrating a new philosophy: "Rakugo is an activity in which the performer and the audience live in the moment.

Danshi was not only a rebel, but also an experimenter who sensed the winds of the times most sensitively. His questions still live on in the debate over whether rakugo is a classic or a new work, and continue to illuminate the future of rakugo.