SGRS doesn’t miss a beat in its return after a year, recapping its first season in a very clever and entertaining fashion: rakugo-style, with Yotarou as the storyteller. His enthusiastic description of events are as vivid as any montage of footage from those events would be. While it certainly stood on its own outside the framing of the present day, last season’s epic flashback is essentially serves as a prologue to this one, imbuing it with emotional weight and significance.
It’s been ten years since Yakumo VIII took Yotarou under his wing. Now Yotarou is a shin’uchi, the third Sukeroku, and wants to be a father to Konatsu’s newborn son, something she’s reticent about, since Yotaoru is “poor, stupid, an entertainer, and has no future”. The future of rakugo itself is in doubt too; Yakumo is seemingly the last extant great master, and the theater in Tokyo is also the last, with Kyoto’s last having closed.
One could call these “Dark Times” for rakugo, but Yotarou/Sukeroku has other ideas, thanks to a productive encounter with cultural writer Higuchi Eisuke, who is eager to back him as a patron. The catch? Be open-minded to the fact that for rakugo to survive, it must change, and Yotarou must be the one to change it. Higuchi clearly expresses his passion as the two drink together, and much of what he says makes a lot of sense to Yotarou, who needs only to clear it with his master.
Yakumo has, like a fine wine, only gotten better at rakugo in the twilight of his life. That’s not too surprising, as rakugo is about gaining and maintaining empathy. It’s a live performance in which the teller must draw the crowd in by turning words, voices and gestures into images in their minds. He’s been in front of crowds most of his life, and knows instinctively how to utterly capture them…and me! Both performances and conversation in this show is simply a joy to watch, especially when the jazzy score kicks in.
Yotarou, who became Yakumo’s apprentice out of adulation, naturally believes he will never surpass his master even if “hell freezes over”, but for rakugo to survive the future – and Yakumo’s partially-hearted efforts to snuff it out lest it become “corrupted”, Yotarou will have to think beyond surpassing his master, and find out how rakugo will have to change.
Yotarou believes fulfilling the “3 conditions” Yakumo gave him requires that he not only learn all of his master’s rakugo, but also find a way to keep rakugo alive, all while taking care of Konatsu and her child by moving in with them to create a family. It won’t be an easy path, but it’s the one Yotarou wants to be on, and I look forward to watching how he walks it.
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