Katsura Sunshine

The Art Student's League closed its doors today for the next month due to corona. no worries however as I brought my supplies home to print like a japanese... with wooden spoon pressing against the back of kitikata paper. in honor of  japanese culture, i'm posting about a rakugo, japanese storytelling performance i saw last fall.

Katsura sunshine's link to japan was greek theater. He produced aristophanes' clouds in toronto for 15 months. During his research, he found an article that listed similarities between greek theater and japanese kabuki theater. He went there for 6 months to explore this connection and ended up staying for 20 years. in order to become a rakugo story teller, one has to be accepted by a rakugo master and train for 3 years. you clean the master's house daily, do their laundry, fold their kimonos. Imagine a world where an accomplished master gives you their last name passed down for generations, welcomes you into his family, trains you as a comedian, teaches you stories he was taught from his master, puts you onstage as his warm-up act, is available to teach and advise as long as you both are living, and never takes a single yen of payment. this is the world of rakugo.

Katsura sunshine came onto the stage with bright j pop blasting from the speakers and knelt in front of dozens of lit candles. He is the only western rakugo performer in the world... this was the first rakugo performance I had seen outside of the witness testimonies in rashomon. I didn’t know what to expect, or understand how different his rakugo would be from traditional rakugo.

"Good evening I am a traditional Japanese Rokugo Storyteller in my name is Katsura Sunshine those of you who are seeing this for the first time raise your hands, those of you who have seen rakugo before, raise your hands. those of you who just are too tired to raise your hands please raise your hands.

For people that have never seen this before, we start with a little bit of an explanation. we use only two props in Japanese we call this a senzu or fan and this a te negui, or hand towel. In rokugo, we must kneel a long time.. in english we call this 'punishment' Rakugo is Japanese form of Storytelling. story telling art has been passed down for 400 years from Master to apprentice in lasting friendship through the ages.”

"I would like try 2 very very short stories for you so you can get used to the kind of stories we tell. The first story I'm going to tell you now is 15 seconds long."

Two ladies gossiping in front of their house in the neighborhood in Old Edo Japan.

"Did you hear mrs. Takahashi down the street fell down on her face and her face became completely disfigured"

" oh really that's too bad"

" yes but the doctor was amazing he managed to put her face right back together the way it was before"

"oh really... that's too bad”

The audience laughed inappropriately.

He then proceeded to tell another funny story, priming the audience to get a feel for the rakugo punchline. “This is the situation in the hospital that my Japanese friends tell me about today. in Japan Japanese elderly people off and go to the hospital not because they are sick but because they want to meet their friends and socialize.” Katsura sunshine now acts out 2 different characters in dialogue.

"Mizayaki, long time no see in the hospital waiting room"

"I'm sorry I couldn't come last week I was sick"

"how do you feel now?"

"much better thank you."

"I'm glad you're feeling better. can you tell us what happened?

"I thought I was going to die today what does my forehead it hurt I touch my nose it hurt and I touched my chin I touch my chest and I touch my hips and I touched my leg and everywhere it hurt. “

"what did the doctor say?

"the doctor said to me do not worry this is not the problem"

"what do you mean this is not a problem"

"it is not a problem, sir you simply have a broken finger"

The audience laughed more.

Then Katsura sunshine proceeded to tell a personal tale. “I tell you this evening to start off I almost died 2 years ago.” The audience nervously laughs. “there's a funny story attached to it and maybe you've heard a rumor of this economy class syndrome. I took a plane to Tokyo a couple years ago. what happened is that I was very exhausted... all my flight home I slept from New York to Tokyo. it's about 14 hours and I slept 13 and 1/2 of the 14 hours I think my legs were in a funny position.

When I got back from New York to Tokyo the next week I was supposed to fly from Tokyo to London and then to Edinboro to do 4 weeks of performances of rock and roll at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and then go to London and start a show at the West end. immediately when I got back to Tokyo I felt a little exhausted and I felt an aching pain in my leg. lt feels like when you exercise too much... but I here's a clue that something was wrong— I do not exercise.. and if I felt a muscle pain because of exercising you would think it would have affected both legs.

I am not someone to go to the doctor... in fact, I never go to the doctor. But I met my best friend and drinking buddy named Miyama and he is a famous back surgeon in Japan. He told me he never had experience with these types of problems but he works at a university hospital and told me just in case, come by and have it checked out.

I think I was fine but when you are planning to board a plane i felt I should play it safe. At worst, I would talk with miyama and get a drink together. After he did some tests on me, he looked grave and told me, “You definitely have blood clots “ you should sit down because we don't know where they are... there's no way we can determine where they are unless we do a CT scan just wait here best thing is not to move not anywhere else. Oh and by the way, your liver and kidneys are fine.”

He had me sit in a wheelchair and the next day I had a CT scan. They give you a little bit of like a liquid and it starts by heating up your head and then heats up your body. I was thinking you know if I wasn't getting a CT scan, I would actually like to have this liquid at dinner sometimes.

In the emergency room they told me you have blood clots in your legs. They told me to lie in a stretcher. 2 days prior I had been walking, now I was in a stretcher. In the hospital everyone knew I was a comedian so they would come up to me with their jokes.

The first doctor said, “You’re lucky you didn't get on that plane to go to the UK you know because get on the plane and the blood clots can move around you could have died.”

Ha ha, very funny I thought. Then the second doctor stopped by and said, “you're lucky you didn't get on that plane because if the blood clot didn’t kill you then you would have been killed for sure by the UK cuisine.”

These Japanese have a deadpan sense of humor. Finally the senior doctor comes in and I thought he would be serious since all the other doctors were taking notes. “He is very very fortunate and very very lucky. It just shows you how you can be saved by early prevention he is so lucky to have chosen the right drinking partner dr. Miyama.

I love the nurses in Japan, most nurses have chosen the wrong career and they should have been stand up comedians. One day my friend came in and was horrified to see me in a stretcher with tubes all over me. The nurse joked with her “life goes by fast and before you know it, you die”

I missed my Edinboro festival performances, but after I survived my near death experience I decided to put on a show at the hospital a couple months after my discharge to thank all the doctors and nurses.

“They made an amazing advertising poster for the event... better than a graphic designer poster. They had a photo of me, and a perfect catch phrase in Japanese saying “come to the sunshine for your health!! You'll die laughing”

After the lighthearted vignettes, Katsura sunshine’s mood turned dark and reflective. “After a death experience one thinks about life in a different way. One thinks about one’s fortune and life. He proceeded to tell a modernized Shinigami story. The shinigami (shin=death kami=spirit) story is a traditional tale, about their god death. A man who is fed up with his life prepares to commit suicide. Before he could do so, however, he is visited by a Shinigami, who tells him that his time has not yet come. When a rakugo storyteller changes characters he does so very quickly, portraying the essential attributes of the character. For the shinigami, katsura sunshine leans forward in old age and looks as if he is hobbling on a cane. To play himself, he straightens his back and has an expression of a youthful man - like Lloyd from dumb and dumber. The Shinigami also explains that each life is measured on a candle, and once the flame burns out, the person dies. This shows that the Shinigami have no control over who lives and dies. To stop the man from committing suicide, the Shinigami tells him an easy way to make money. The man is told that he could pretend to be a doctor who could cure any form of disease. By speaking some magic words, a Shinigami can be forced back into the underworld, thus lengthening a person’s life. The man is also informed that this would only work if the Shinigami is sitting at the foot of the bed. If the Shinigami is sitting at the head of the bed, however, it means that the sick person must die. Using this new found knowledge, the man grew very rich. When he saw the shinigami at the foot of the bed he would say the incantation, the family of the person would pay him thinking he saved their loved one’s life.

One day, the man is called to a house to cure someone. When he enters, he sees that the Shinigami is sitting on the head of patient’s bed, indicating that death was certain. The family pleaded and begged, and offered him a 15,0000 dollars. Consumed by greed, the man decides to take a risk, and when the Shinigami dozes off, he quickly orders 4 of the man’s relatives to switch the orientation of the patient’s bed, thus saving his life.

The Shinigami is obviously unhappy with what he did, and when the man reaches home, it criticizes him for his disobedience. The Shinigami then changes his tone, and suggest that they go out for a drink to celebrate his earnings. The man falls for the trick, and the Shinigami brings him to a building that is filled with candles. The Shinigami then shows the man his candle, which is nearly burnt out as a result of what he had just done. The shinigami tells the man? He has never seen a man give up his life for an exact sum of money (15,000 dollars). The man is then offered a chance to extend his life by transferring the wick and wax of his candle to another’s. The man fails in this attempt, as he drops his candle and dies. At this point Katsura sunshine bows down as if dying and all the candles go out on stage. This was a very serious and unexpected disquieting undisney ending. Katsura sunshine had taken us on a journey... with the power of rakugo... shown ideas and dialogue transition and bounce from character to character from the very lighthearted fantasy to he autobiographical to the deadly serious and philosophical within the span of an hour.