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♪♪♪
Welcome to Portland Community College Sylvania Campus Japanese program.
And today, before anything else I would like to acknowledge our distinguished guest.
And so if you would kindly stand as I make announcement
Mr. Murabayashi consultant of Portland and his wife, Mrs. Murabayashi
welcome to PCC.
And so todays program is brought by three or four of wonderful
wonderful programs and departments on our campus.
So Multicultural Center, thank you. ASPCC Sylvania, thank you.
English and World Languages division Sylvania, thank you.
And a special thanks also goes to Theater and Art department in trying to coach us from this
event and set up.
We also would like to thank Dr. Larry Kominz of PSU's Japanese department
and without him we would not have known about Matthew Shores sensei.
So in today's program, it's going to be presented by
Professor Matthew Shores of PSU.
Professor Matthew Shores teaches Japanese at Portland State University
where he recieved his BA and MA degrees.
His PhD is from the University of Hawaii, Manoa
and his primary research is on comic storytelling in the Kansai area of Japan.
Kaminata Nakugo tends to a 2010 2012 Monbugakushoo research scholarship.
Professor Shores recently resided in Osaka for a year and a half to conduct
dissertation research in the study of the art of Rakugo
under master Hayashiya Somemaru the fourth.
Professor Shores teaches Rakugo
and other performing arts in classes and workshops, and believes a sense of humor
can be helpful in any classroom.
Please give a warm welcome to Professor Matthew Shores Sensei.
[ applause ]
Thank you so much for coming out to Portland Community College
tonight, well it's not night, usually we perform at night, when we do Rakugo but today, this afternoon
we're in the little theater.
And we have so many people, and it's quite an honor to be here.
Some of you may have seen or heard Rakugo in the past, some of you may have heard
about Rakugo, but some of you may have never even heard the word Rakugo before
and I'll explain a little bit about Rakugo to you.
First I'd like to of course thank our distinguished guests
consul-general Murabayashi and his wife Mrs. Murabayashi
thank you for coming and thank you everybody who supported this program,
it's quite an honor to be here.
Sponsors including the multicultural center here at PCC,
the Associated Students of PCC at Sylvania, English and World Languages division,
And a number of guests at the Portland State University Center for Japanese Studies.
Tomodachi-Kai and also JASO, Japan American Society of Oregon.
They're good friends of Portland Community College and Portland State University.
Without their support and encouragement, this wouldn't be possible either.
So what you see before you, this is Rakugo. So far so good, right?
A guy comes out in a kimono and greets you.
Rakugo is a pretty simplistic art. One person sits down on a cushion
and says a... Narrates a funny story.
There aren't any spectacular costume changes like in other theater arts of Japan like Kabuki.
You have a table which is called a kendai in Japanese.
And in front, this is a hizakakushi. Literally a knee cover. It's just a formality.
Just so you don't have to see my ugly knees.
So these are only used in Osaka. If you go to watch Rakugo in Tokyo, you will not see these.
The art in Osaka developed alongside another storytelling art called Koosyaku or Koodan
and they used these. And in Koosyaku and Koodan they pound on the table.
And so the Osaka Rakugo variety uses this table for some stories, though not all.
A couple of other things i should probably tell you about.
I need your imagination. As I, the single storyteller depict
a different world and different characters
I need you to believe in what you're seeing and what I'm trying to show.
When character's speak, I do all the speaking for them.
Now some professionals are very good at doing voices, voices for males, voices for females,
voices for older people, voices for younger people.
But some professionals choose not to do voices.
They think with good acting and good narration techniques,
you don't need voices necessarily.
So how can you tell the characters apart? Well, there are some
conventions in Rakugo.
One convention is the shift of the storytelling.
I'll give you an example. Say we have character A, and character A faces, the storyteller
faces about forty five degrees this way. And now I'm character A all of the sudden
and I'm talking to over there, character B.
So if I say, hey hey how you doing, how you doing?
Ma'am, you don't need to come on up and say I'm doing fine, thank you.
Character A is talking to character B.
And then, when the storyteller shifts this way
magically I become character B.
Let's see how this works, okay?
Hi, how you doing how you doing?
Oh good good, I'm fine, I haven't seen you a while where have you been?
Oh you know, I've been around. Okay kind of like this.
But what if the person is on the other side of a busy room?
All kinds of people in between. Might look something like this...
Hey hey, how you doing? Hi!
Oh hey hey, hey you're looking good.
Hey thanks, you're not looking too bad yourself.
Now what if these same two people are blocks away.
Way down the street. Let's see how that works.
Hello! Hi, how you doing?
What?
How you doing?
I'm fine! Strange man...
It's not the first time that's been said to me.
So this is Rakugo. I need your imagination to believe
that there's a story happening out here.
There are no props I'm not going to use this table for anything other than hitting or leaning on.
This is a hibachi. And old Japanese brazier used for heat in a cold space.
It's just for looks today. There's no embers in here burning. But two important props
that are used in Rakugo. One is a folding fan.
It's used as a fan of course, among many other things and I'll explain that.
Also a hand towel. This is also used to depict a number of things.
In japanese this is called a sensu.
Now it can just be a fan, but it can also become a pipe
from which you smoke tobacco for example.
Say you want to have a litte bit of sake.
It can become a sake bottle.
It can also become a sword with which you cut somebody down with.
It can become... Oh, it started raining so, pull out an umbrella.
And hey I'm walking believe it or not.
Okay, it can become a bow and arrow.
It can become a number of other things,
which you will see more of today. Now this, this hand towel, the tenugui, can become
a number of things. For example it could become... Um, how much was that again? Four?
A wallet.
It could also become a hat, right? It could become a number of other things.
Believe it or not, this little hand towel could also become a hot roasted potato.A sweet potato.
Don't believe me? Watch.
That's the stem.
See? Roasted sweet potato.
So this all goes to say that I need your imagination.
There are all kinds of stories in Rakugo.
There some stories about samurai, there are some stories about the merchant class
and the lower classes. Rakugo is an art that was
traditionally performed by commoners for commoners,
so the heroes of these stories are typically people from the lower rungs of society.
If samurai are in the story, they tend to be on the bottom by the end of the story.
The social class system is often turned on his head which is great for the masses in Japan.
There are wonderful stories about travel in Rakugo as well.
I was up late last night thinking about what I was going to say to you in the
introduction, and I started thinking about travel.
Travel is incredibly convenient today, isn't it?
I'm going to Japan later on this month. I'm very very exciting to be able to go again.
I'm thinking, I can get on a plane and I can get to Japan in about ten hours.
Get on a plane, and I'm in Japan.
This fabulous. You know if you think about travel, one hundred and fifty, two hundred yeras ago
it wasn't so convenient.
My great-grandmother was alive until I was about twenty two years old,
and she often said to me, you know, when I was a child, I used to have to walk to school.
In the snow, uphill both ways.
She may have been exaggerating a little bit, especially the uphill part
but it's become incredibly convenient in recent years.
The invention of the train. All of a sudden they laid tracks all the way across
the country and you can sit down and travel hundreds of miles comfortably.
and then they invented the car. You could get in an
automobile and drive anywhere you wanted to. Here, there, anywhere.
You could go just about anywhere in a car except down into a hole.
And I hear that's where the idea of the subway came from.
Okay, maybe not.
So the story I'm going to tell you today is a travel story.
And the two main characters of this story, their names are Seehachi and Kiroku.
For short they're called Seean or Kiko.
And so they live in Osaka and they're gonna head out about... Well hundreds
of miles to the east, to the Grand Shrine at Ise.
And many people in Japan even today make it a point
in their life to make it to the Grand Shrine at Ise.
This was happening hundreds of years ago, it still happens today. They say okay,
let's go, we're good friends, you and I, we can have a nice trip.
And so they save their money and they get ready to leave from Osaka.
And that's where the story begins.
I'm going to start this story, but I want to demonstrate a short section in Japanese
using these little wooden blocks called kobyooshi
And also this fan looking thing. It is a fan with paper wrapped around it.
This is called the hariogi or harisen and it's used to strike the table I have.
It sounds really interesting in japanese and it's a good challenge for me
to try this, so we're going to start the story in japanese as
Seehachi and Kiroku leave Osaka.
And if you don't speak Japanese, don't worry, I'm going to follow this right away
with the english version.
So see, this Japanese can get pretty difficult, but this is good training for me.
So let me get my bearings here. This is part of Rakugo, and if it's not good
what you need to do as an audience, you can say hey, come on, give us a better show.
Anybody?
Give us a boo, thank you.
And so my Rakugo masters told me don't do that in Japanese, but it's a challenge so...
Now, what did all of this mean in English?
This goes something like this. I hope I can get through it in english a little better
than I got through it in Japanese.
The minute they leave Osaka they come to a place called Tamatsukuri
Here they find two tea houses.
One belonging to a master Masuya Yoshibei and another man named Tsuriya Hidejiroo
this place is also called the two tea house town
Here the meet up with some friends and they drink some fine sake
everybody's here to see them off
and now all that's left is enjoyable an enjoyable two man journey
and they're off
okay okay here we go here we go
from Nakamichi they come to a place called Honjyoo and from Honjyoo, Tematsubashi
and from Tematsubashi, they come to a place called Fukai.
They say if you're going to buy a hat, you should buy one in Fukai
there's an old song about Fukai specializing in these
japanese style sedge hats
they're called Fukaigasa in Japanese
and they sit very low on your head.
They each buy one and they head out.
To the east to the east
From Takaiya they pass the Fuji tea house.
and then they come to a place called
uh... Mijuriyanukata toiura matsubara and standing in front
of them is none other than
the shadow slip past
ascend six thousand four hundred and forty feet and you're at the summit
don't forget to leave a water offering for the mountain deity
there's an old
Bashoo poem, Matsuo Bashoo you may have heard of him there's an old stone
tablet that has a poem of his and it reads something like this
:though called shadow slip
you can see as far as the
radian stone horizon that's Akashi
legend has it that this place was originally called the shadow not
the shadow slip the but the saddle slip past
because the slope was so steep that those riding horses
would slip right off of their saddle.
from Oosa they come to Sunejyaya then Amagatsuji
and then they come to a fork in the road to the right is a place called Yamatonokooriyama
and to the left
is Nanto also known as Nara
Nara is written with two characters which mean south and capitol.
and there's an old famous Waka poem about the ancient capital it goes
something like this the ancient capital of Nara eight petal cherry blossoms today
bloom in nine petal glorious profusion
isn't that a beautiful poem
and so in Nara there's two famous,
we're going to continue the story now that's what I just did in japanese were
going to continue the story now
in japanese
uh... not in japanese but in Nara they have two
uh... old famous inns
one is owned by a man called
Inbanya Shooemon and the other man owns one his name is
Kogatanayo Zensuke and these two men are very proud about the fact that no matter
how long one's stays they chang the bedding and furniture every single night
So they decide to stay at the Inbanya
and they get up early the next morning
and they head out
as they approach a town called Nobe they see there in the distance
emerging from the shadows of the forest
a group of about one hundred commoners and they
are all coming back it looks like from a pilgrimage to Ise where are two
characters are going
and so they come out and every single one of them is wearing the same japanese style
sedge hat
and from afar they look like
a procession of my Matsutake mushrooms
and what a lively set of pilgrims they are.
Did you see all those people, wow they were making all kinds of noise, it looks like they were having a really good time.
Yeah... there must have been about a hundred of them
Yeah, I wonder where they're from.
Oh you didn't see?
They're from Awa.
Awa? How do you know?
It said right on their hats it said "ah" in Japanese and around that there
was a circle and you read that "wah". Awa
I thought that said...
I thought that that said waaa-ah.
There's no place in japan called waaa-ah. It was Awa.
You have to read those from the inside to out,
you know like the famous store Daimaru.
There's a dai
and around that there's a circle maru
But you just said that you read the circle "wa" wouldn't that be daiwa?
It's a different story
just trust me
you know, they look like they were having a really good time
and uh... you know it's no fun to walk along in silence, you know you and I should play
a game or something.
Yeah I like games what do you want to play?
I know, let's play that game Atozuke
Satozuke?
Are you going to give me some food?
No not Satozuke, Atozuke. It's that game
shiritori.
Oooh what you scoop up and throw away trash with?
No that's chiritori, not dust pan.
It's.... what you do is you just take the last part of what somebody says
and you make your own phrase with it
okay um... so
let's play that.
uh, I don't really...
Okay it's kind of confusing for you, but let's just play ok?
Just keep rhythm with me and say
:A-korakora a-korakora
and then i'll do all of the atozuke
no problem
okay let's play
all right
Somo somo Imose no hajimari wa
♪
Hey! Where did you get that teacup?
Teacup?
I got it at the teashop we were at.
At the teashop we were at?
You bought a teacup?
I didn't say i bought it...
You stole it?
I didn't steal it, I paid for the tea.
You stole that cup.
Look let me tell you something
when we go to those places those tea shops expect groups of five, ten
fifteen, twenty if they're even missing one teacup
they're going to look bad they need complete sets of those things,
all right so
look it's just going to make them look bad don't do that again were on a pilgrimage
to Ise we don't need any bad luck.
Don't worry about that I know how they work at tea shops i have one here that's
why i have two more here, and two more here
and I've got five in my bag.
You got ten?!
look
let's go and no more trouble out of you, come on
Seean...
Seean...
Seean.... What do you want?
Just be quiet
I'm hungry.
You do not say i'm hungry out here in the countryside
Why? Osakans don't say that they're hungry.
Osakans get hungry too.
I know we get hungry but you don't say it in such a loud voice, it looks bad you should
say something more fashionable all right?
You need to look good.
Say something like my machsto is kitayama, let's put it in the stopper
Huh? Say my machsto is kitayama. Put it in the stopper.
If you say something like that nobody will understand what you say.
i don't even understand what you're saying.
Okay okay listen.
Machsto is just stomach turned around.
and kitayama that means north mountain and if you look at the north mountain
on a beautiful day
it's wide open vast, empty.
My stomach is empty, all right?
Put in the stopper just means to put food in your stomach.
Ohhhh I see so if to eat means
put in the stopper, does to go to the bathroom you have to say pull the plug?
No nobody says anything like that, ok all right...
Oh hey look,
right here there's Niuriya
It's a it's a place that specializes in
slowly simmered foods.
I bet you like that, why don't you go up there and check it out
Okay i'll check it out.
Seean they're closed.
What do you mean they're closed?
They're not closed no no they had a sign out front
A sign? What did it say?
Will not make anything in fact
A various lot we've got but not.
What the heck does that mean
Where does it say that? Come on I'll show you.
Noooo, this doesn't say, it says...
Look, food, sake and much more,
signed, the green willow, food stopper.
Pretty bad writing huh?
I'd say pretty bad reader. Come on let's go inside.
Hello... hey hey.
uh... would would you mind if we came in and we we had a seat?
Just right here?
Suit yourself
If I didn't want anybody here don't you think I would have put the stools away already?
okay well in that case will just uh...
just come in here have a puff then.
Suit yourself on that too it's your tobacco smoke all you like.
Okay uh well, what have you got?
What have I got?
I've got a boil on my keister.
No no, i mean i mean, do you have anything fired up?
Fired up?
Well the fence out back is charred black, that was fired up.
No... uh,
do you have anything fishy?
Fishy? Even better we've got two cess pits out back.
Cess pits? No, I'm trying to say
uh... do you have anything made?
Made? Do you want straw sandals or something?
Do you have anything consumable?
Consumable?
Our stone wall has been consumed by elements for years, it's ready to fall any day.
Seean would you just get in here?
Watch out, watch out.
Hi, old man.
What my friend here is trying to say is,
do you have anything that would taste good with sake?
Ohhh you want food?
Yea food, we'd like some food.
Why didn't you just say so? He was here asking me for all these weird things,
and he started bawling and i didn't know what i was going to do.
That's how you handle
these countryfolk all right?.
all right so uh old man what have you got to eat?
Look right up here on the board here I can make pretty much anything on there.
Okay right over...
Hey hey hey
let me do the ordering okay?
All right...
uh...
Kushiraka, Akaike, Akakaike, Tosyaoke
Hey old man is this some kind of joke?
No it's not a joke that's not how you read that
that's Kujirajiru, Akaijiru, Akagaijiru, Dojyoojiru
You've got pretty bad writing. I'd say you're a bad reader.
I'd say so too.
All right, what is the, what is the dojyoojiru
uh... well that's just miso soup with dojyoo, loaches in it, it's fish.
uh... that sounds good why don't you bring us two of those and make it quick.
All right you got it.
Hey old woman, old woman!
I need you to run into town and get some miso,
I'm gonna go out back and I'm going to catch some loaches.
Hey, wait just a minute, you're going ot go out and catch loaches right now?
Well yeah, It's not going to take me very long, my wife's going to go into town and by the time
she gets back we'll have a bunch of loaches in the trap and i'll make you your soup.
Well I didn't see a town on the way, is that town nearby?
Well yeah it's just over the mountain, eight and a half miles away.
Eight and a... there's no way she's going to get back any time soon with legs like those.
No just make us something that you can
give us right now
Forget the dojyoojiru.
All right what do you have?
Well come up here and look at the counter we got all kinds of stuff i can
heat up right now.
But we've been walking all day just tell us what you've got.
Okay uh...
right here we have some koimo that's baby taro
how about that?
Uh koimo no that's slimy,
and it makes me sick, what else do you got?
Okay uh... uh how about Nishin
that's uh herring.
Nishin uh no that leaves a bitter taste in my mouth what else do you got?
All right how about Kazunoko, herring roe
That's pretty good it's not bitter. Kazunoko...
No that gets stuck up in my cheeks and in my teeth...what else you got?
All right well we've got some good boiled carrots.
Boiled carrots, ooh I carrots, no people will be calling me a rabbit or something.
All right uh...
How about Namabushi
that's smoked bonito, it's good fish.
Namabushi no that that's too expensive.
Look hey if you're going to be so tight with your money there's no way you're going
to get anything here to eat.
All right? Quit being so tight with your money and order something.
It's not that I'm being tight with my money it's uh, that...
today is a day of abstinence for my late father.
I can't have any meat or fish.
Oh i'm sorry about that,
in case how about some Koyadofu.
That's dry tofu reconstituted with some really nice broth.
All of the monks eat it up on Mt. Koya
Koyadofu, no that's too dry uh
but then again if that's all you have uh... i guess we'll have to take it.
All right well two orders of koyadofu coming right up,
Wait wait wait wait wait, just just a minute,
would you just do us one little favor?
Yeah. Would you mind just squeezing the juice out of that?
Squeezing the juice out of it?
You just said it's too dry.
If i do that it'll be so parched you won't be able to swallow it.
No but that's how we eat it in Osaka,
you know just yea just squeeze that out for us.
All right you guys have a strange way of eating but i'll do it.
No no no, not like that not like you're scared of it with your chopsticks
Take it right in your hands and wring that baby out.
Wring it out?
Are you sure?
Okay...
Like this?
Yatto, yatto, yatto
Yeah yeah yeah, just like that.
No on second hand,
that thing looks like a sponge now.
That looks to dry to eat, no we can't eat that.
That's what I just told you!
Now what am I supposed to do with this?
Oh oh you said that that namabushi that that fish,
was made in some good soup,
why don't you just poor a little bit of that
a little bit about right over the top.
Ah I see what you're up to.
Uh huh, well, I guess that doesn't sound too bad and,
I guess I could spare a little bit of soup but only soup you hear.
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
no no no no no no no no, don't, you don't need to pick the fish out,
you could leave a couple pieces of fish that's that's fine.
I thought you said it was your your father's day of abstinence.
Yeah yeah,
but these were my father's last words
:boy, always observe my days of abstinence,
and for that you can have all the darn soup you want.
He said that on his death bed? Yeah.
Okay well, if you want fish you're gonna have to pay for it
You've got no backbone at all, come on.
I've got no backbone? You've got no backbone?
Huh? I've got no backbone? Fine! You give us a slab of that namabushi we'll take some.
Doesn't come in slabs it comes in slices.
I know it comes in slices I want it in a slab. Fine.
Look at him, he's cutting it paper thin.
Yeah hey old man you're pretty good with that knife.
We could use a guy like you in Osaka, yeah you know the garnishing they cut from
Daikon radish that they put right next to raw fish? You'd be good at cutting that stuff.
Ha I tell ya, I bet I could blow from here and send that stuff fluttering about watch this.
Hi i-no-fun-no-mi
Oh ho! Look at it go it's fluttering all around.
Look it's fluttering all around, oh look it's right on the plate.
I put it on the plate.
You boys are served.
Hey hey hey Kiko you better calm down, he looks like he's getting kind of angry all right.
Let's just enjoy this.
Hey, old many uh,
do you have any uh, good sake here?
Well sake,
yeah we make some fine sake right here in the village.
uh... we've got Murasame, Niwasame and Jikisame
Those are pretty strange names for sake,
how's the Murasame.
Oh well as you know,
Mura means village.
You drink that and it goes down really smooth and it tastes quite wonderful.
Yeah uh... and the minute you leave our village the drunkenness wears off.
Well that doesn't sound like very reliable sake.
How about the Niwasame.
Niwasame, well as you know Niwa means garden.
You drink the sake here and the minute you step down into my garden the
drunkenness wears off.
Well that's about as good as useless,
all right how about the Jikisame,
Jikisame well that's pretty good.
It sobers you up as you drink it,
as you know jiki means instantly.
Hey hey hey hey hey old man,
I bet you mix water in with the sake here don't you.
Me noooo,
I mix a little bit of sake in with the water.
You're pretty funny
old man you sure are an artful one.
I'd say i'm a heartful one.
So there you have it,
uh... after exchanging a few cups of sake and pouring a few more.
Our two usual suspects,
find themselves in a delightful
drunken state
and then they continue on
with their journey
to the east.
Thank you very much.
My name is Matt Shores I'm a
PhD candidate at the University of Hawaii.
I'm currently an instructor of Japanese at Portland State University
Rakugo is very distinctive as a narrative art it's a comical narritive tradition.
It's done by one person, there's one person on stage at a time.
They wear kimono,
traditional japanese clothes there are no spectacular costume
changes there is no sets.
You really need the audiences' imagination really all you used for
props in Rakugo is a simple folding fan and a hand towel
and these though they can be used as
a fan and as a hand towel or
you know handkerchief they're used to um... demonstrated a number
of other things
for example a tobacco pipe or
a bottle of sake or even a
hot roasted sweet potato. Another characteristic of Rakugo is that it's
performed sitting down japanese style
that style is called seiza
You have to sit down in that position for a long period of time and
for beginners,
legs fall asleep like that so it's difficult to get up so it takes some
practice but that's one of the characteristics of Rakugo is you're always
sitting down.
Even if your character is standing up, running,
walking through the woods or uh... making his way somewhere you're sitting
down and you have to
in the Rakugo way portray that you're standing. Rakugo as we know it today
started in about a
well dates back to probably uh... the eighteen nineties
and it was done in in halls in in large cities in Japan and Tokyo in Osaka.
Also other cities like Kyoto as well.
But the two main areas where Rakugo is performed today is
Tokyo and Osaka. Rakugo goes
back a lot further than that however though it wasn't called Rakugo
there were other names for it such as otoshi banashi or karukuchi banashi,
which literally means funny tails or like mouth stories
Rakugo is connected to traditions that go back to
the beginning of the early modern
era of japan which is sixteen hundred to eighteen sixty eight.
We can connect Rakugo to earlier narrative traditions, sermon
traditions of buddhist monks
that date back to the tenth century and earlier. The way people learn Rakugo
is through a formal apprenticeship,
you have to approach a master
and you have to say
master so-and-so
could i become your pupil?
There's a chance that the the master will look you up and down and say
no I don't think you and i would get along
and it's a no.
There are other times where they say well okay do you have a driver's license?
If you can drive come to my house tomorrow at eight and we'll get started.
Rakugo apprenticeship doesn't necessarily consist of
Rakugo lessons though.
I had an informal apprenticeship in Japan with a well-known master
and my apprenticeship
didn't consist of
a formal Rakugo lesson, a sit down Rakugo lesson we did have an
informal lesson over I'm making dinner one night
he recited the lines to me, I repeated them
most of what my apprenticeship consisted
of was going to his house early
making breakfast, eating breakfast with them,
then cleaning his house from top to bottom.
Vacuuming, cleaning the toilet by the time i left Japan i think his toilet
was probably cleaner than it had ever been.
You go with him to shows, you make sure his tea is always served
just the way he likes it.
You take care of his kimono, you fold it in and when you get back from shows
you hang it up so it doesn't
get musty or any mildew. You have to take of everything the master
needs so Rakugo apprenticeship is about looking after your master,
sharpening your antennas to his needs
and in turn, the audiences needs.
By becoming...
I hate to say slave but sometimes it
does feel that way but it it's it's it's a good hard apprenticeship that
teaches you how to take care of people,
and you learn Rakugo by watching your master
and then performing it and then him telling you no that's not how it's done.
Yeah that's how one learns Rakugo and then it's just trial by error.