From the mischievous five-year-old Shin Chan, the robotic cat Doraemon and the trouble-making Ninja Hattori to the various anime series, Chennaiites have found a quiet fascination with Japan. Today, that cultural curiosity has grown deeper, moving into the world of traditional art forms.
One such art form — Rakugo, a classic style of Japanese storytelling — came to Chennai on Sunday. Santhosh Kaliyanaraman, an NRI from Tamil Nadu who crossed borders to pursue his interest in Rakugo and Japanese culture, presented the act. Dressed in a kimono, seated on his knees, with just a hand fan and a kerchief, he brought to life a series of classical Japanese tales in Tamil and English at Anna Centenary Library.
Rakugo is a solo, sit-down storytelling form that dates back to nearly four centuries. The performer remains seated throughout the act, often in a kneeling position called seiza, and enacts multiple characters using just minimal props. It’s a form of mono-acting that relies heavily on vocal shifts, gestures, and facial expressions.
“Every Rakugo story builds up to a strong climax punchline called ochi which is the soul of the performance. The stories themselves are often passed down for generations. While most Rakugo are comic in nature, there are also ghost stories (Kaidanbanashi) and emotional narratives (Ninjobanashi),” says Santhosh.
His discovery of Rakugo was accidental. While living in Bengaluru five years ago, he happened to attend an event by a Japanese storyteller who couldn’t speak a word of English. The performance was entirely in Japanese, a language Santhosh barely knew. Yet, he was fascinated. “I couldn’t understand anything, but I fell in love with it,” he says. That led him to read more, and discover Rakugo being performed in English in Japan. He eventually shifted to Tokyo, where he now lives and works as an IT engineer while learning the art on the side.
Rakugo is taught in a guru-shishya tradition, and Santhosh’s learning began two-and-a-half years ago under a shishou (mentor) as part of an English Rakugo association. Students typically train in a single story for six months, performing it repeatedly in front of their teacher, receiving corrections and improving their unique style. “If he doesn’t say anything, it’s worse,” he laughs. Once the teacher feels the student is ready, they perform the piece in front of an audience at what is called a happyoukai — a debut performance similar to an arangetram.
Santhosh’s first story was Misomame, one close to his heart, which he performed again on Sunday. “In fact, it’s the first story performed by most professionals. It’s like the alphabet when we start learning any language,” he says. The event, designed to be child-friendly, also featured four other stories: a family and their pet monkey, a day in the life of a new zookeeper, a Buddhist monk and his assistant, and finally an extra story on audience request, a man and rickshaw-wallahs.
“These are classical stories that have been performed for 300 to 400 years. Like Carnatic music, they remain the same, but every performer brings a different flavour without changing the essence,” says Santhosh. While classical stories are called Koten Rakugo, there is also Shinsaku Rakugo, which involves original stories created by performers.
Translating these tales from Japanese to Tamil and English, however, is not without challenges. “Comedy is always cultural. There are a lot of wordplays and puns called dajare and cultural references that don’t translate well,” he says. To ensure the humour lands, Santhosh replaces or flattens these references without stripping the story of its Japanese meaning. “I try to stick to the original Japanese culture. I don’t want to make it like a dubbed English film.”
So far, he has performed about 35 shows in Tokyo. In India, he did three shows last year and four this time, with this being the last of the trip. “The response in Bengaluru and Chennai has been lovely. People love the format,” says Santhosh.
Among Sunday’s audience were several children and parents— many of whom were witnessing Rakugo for the first time. “I have been to a storytelling event before but I liked this better because it was very funny and interactive,” says Nithila, a 10-year-old accompanied by her father Ramkumar Natarajan, a stand-up comic who witnessed Santhosh’s show the previous day at Medai, Alwarpet. “Even though I had met him (Santhosh) a few times in Japan, I had no idea about Rakugo until I went to his show yesterday. Today’s show was really good and everyone seems to have enjoyed it, including me,” says Ramkumar.
As the event came to a close, it was a young audience member who softly said “Arigato” (thank you), offering a small but meaningful farewell in the language of the stories they had just heard.