Rakugo: Performing Comedy and Cultural Heritage in Contemporary Tokyo (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780739122457)

Rakugo introduces the storytelling genre of Edo-style rakugo as performed around the turn of the twenty-first century, focusing on the performers' image, training, and techniques and the art's contexts and audiences. Brau argues that, while storytellers' goal of making a hit with audiences sustains the art's vitality, rakugo has come to represent something more than simply popular entertainment: it is also regarded as the cultural heritage to which some Japanese may turn in a nostalgic search for identity.

Author: Lorie Brau
ISBN-10: 0739122452
ISBN-13: 9780739122457
Publisher: Lexington Books
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2008
Pages: 274
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.21lbs
Size: 9.20h x 5.97w x 0.85d