A spoiler-filled, thematical analysis of Showa Genroku Raguko Shinju, prior to watching the second season.
I cannot begin talking about this show without first talking about the Shinigami.
The Shinigami is something that many of us, myself included, have come to think of as a cornerstone of Japanese myth, it’s a spirit of death and we all make this association and compare it to a Grim Reaper of sorts, it’s in the name after all.
Historically however, the Shinigami has not always been here. It’s first appearance goes back to the works of the Edo period, and not in rakugo, but bunraku, or puppet theater. It is here that the Shinigami begins to gain an association with death by being an entity which drives lovers to a double-suicide; shinju.
The importance of the Shinigami, both as the god and the rakugo play, is hidden in plain sight, it took me more than a day after I had already finished the anime for me to realize how essential it is to the story of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju.
Yakumo’s performance for the prisoners is what convinced Yotaro to become a rakugoka, but more than that it acts as a parallel to Yotaro’s early journey as an apprentice.
When Yakumo accepts to taking him as an apprentice, Yotaro is granted a boon, just as the character in the rakugo play is granted the ability to see Shinigami and cure people of their illness.
But just like this character which unknowingly traded his life for 1000 gold coins in the story, Yotaro neglects to care for the lifeline he’s been granted and is expelled by Yakumo.
There is however, still one more chance to be had. The Shinigami, or Yakumo in this case, is willing to take Yotaro back as an apprentice if he can promise three things: 1. Find your own rakugo; 2. Open up a path to rakugo’s survival; and 3. Don’t die before I do.
This pact acts as Yotaro’s one and only chance at life, without this he will be nothing, no home, no family, no friends, no future. In that sense it mirrors the deal that the Shinigami offers the man in the story, “you may live but only if you can keep the candle from going out”.
At this point it’s becoming increasingly clear how the Shinigami as a performance becomes an encapsulation of the main character’s lives but also of the overarching story.
It is ironic, but also incredibly fitting how Yakumo manages to become an embodiment of the Shinigami.
His life began surrounded by geisha, a profession which trains women in the arts of song and dance but is also inextricably linked with prostitution as we later see with Miyokichi. After being shunned from the geisha house he was born in, Yakumo is set on the path of rakugo and death.
He becomes the god of death in all that he does, death becomes a part of everything which surrounds him. The death of his master, the death of Sukeroku and Miyokichi just like those of honor-bound lovers in the suicide stories from the Edo period, the death of rakugo.
He has become death.
And he embraces it as a young rakugoka, believing it to be the vehicle to his ideal state; loneliness.
Sukeroku and Miyokichi are polar opposites to Yakumo. They each represent opposing symbolic values: comedy and tragedy, love and disinterest, life and death respectively, in many things, not only rakugo.
Not all is bad in death however, we can see towards the end of the series, and the end of Yakumo’s story, that the symbol of death is turned on its head.
Death is the culmination of life.
It is the end point for all human experiences.
As such, death plays an equal part in all of them, "All the good, all the bad. . . Your rakugo has given me every emotion imaginable".
It is the Shinigami’s pact which Yakumo offers that allows Yotaro to live, and he, together with Konatsu become the foil to the loneliness which plagued Yakumo after being abandoned by his partner and his love interest all those years ago.
Unlike the “yotaro” in the play, our protagonist will succeed in his last chance at life. In that sense, Yotaro might be the one to defeat death, not in a literal way, but by surpassing his master and taking on the name of Sukeroku.
It is only fitting that the season is brought to an end with Yotaro performing the same rakugo play which Konatsu’s father performed when he was apprenticed, “Nozarashi”. This is another story which mixes the conflicting themes of life and death, made even more obvious previously by Yakumo’s gloomy performance of it contrasted with Sukeroku’s jovial singing. It is during this cheerful song, which Konatsu treasures, that she reveals her pregnancy.
If before I said that Sukeroku and Miyokichi symbolize life, and Yakumo symbolizes death, then Yotaro will be the rebirth of rakugo.
“Ajaraka mokuren kyuraisu tegeretsuno . . . Pa!”