Rakugo: Performing Comedy and Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Tokyo

Rakugo introduces the storytelling genre of Edo-style rakugo as performed around the turn of the twenty-first century, focusing on the performers' image, training, and techniques and the art's contexts and audiences. Brau argues that, while storytellers' goal of making a hit with audiences sustains the art's vitality, rakugo has come to represent something more than simply popular entertainment: it is also regarded as the cultural heritage to which some Japanese may turn in a nostalgic search for identity.

Author: Lorie Brau
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 03/01/2008
Pages: 274
Weight: 1.21lbs
Size: 9.20h x 5.97w x 0.85d
ISBN: 9780739122457