Akane-banashi ‒ Episode 6

Episode 6 of Akane-banashi presents Akane with a challenge she can't rise to right away - and that's what makes it great.

In this week's episode, we are introduced to Koguma, a unique foil for Akane. He challenges her in a new way that Akane has yet to be tested in. Namely, his background is knowing the background; Koguma knows more about these stories than Akane does, and in ways she had never considered. This is a fascinating challenge for Akane, specifically because it ties into rakugo while going beyond pure on-stage performance capabilities.

What is so critical about Koguma's approach is that he understands rakugo's essence as an art form. Rakugo is obviously analogous to a solo play/monologue of sorts, but they are also fundamentally a period piece. These are tales with defined historical settings, with unique considerations that could only come from that time and place in Japan's past. The historical details, such as clothing styles, housing arrangements, and what everyday items were made of - these might seem like academic details, but they are so much more than that. Sure, you can tell a story about people gambling with dice-based games of chance in 2026 and 1626, and there will be many similarities. But other details will be of the utmost importance! Consider something as simple as the dice: modern dice are plastic and mass-produced, whereas dice in the Edo period were hand-crafted from bone or another material. They will have a particular sound and feel, and even replacing them is not so simple if something were to happen to them.

All of this is to say that Kugoma is leveraging these aspects to couch his stories in a sense of verisimilitude. The people feel real, the place feels real, and both will be familiar yet given an allure of novelty because of the time displacement from the here and now. Additionally, Koguma develops a unique bond and confidence with the stories he researches, and he can impart that knowledge to the audience. This opens up a new vector of enjoyment for them, too. Now, whether or not they resonate with the story or the performance, they have the opportunity to learn something about the historical reality of people living in that time.

Akane has none of these qualities. What's more, they take a new kind of dedication for her to explore. This will require her to do more than parrot stories (“just words,” as Koguma put it) and demand that she grow in her learning. Akane will need to dedicate her time and passion in a new way to become more academically studied in rakugo and the stories therein, a feat that only comes from hard work.

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