“Rakugo” performed in sign language
“Rakugo”, a Japanese sit-down comedy of comic story telling, is one of the traditional culture that has been verbally passed down through generations. The performer in Japanese traditional formal clothes (kimono) sits on his knees on a cushion (zabuton), tells comic stories using a fan (sensu) and a hand towel (tenugui). It could be considered as a black joke or a comedy if it were performed in other languages. “Rakugo” or a performer is always studying how he can make an audience laugh and so is Deaf Ippuku, who became the first professional Rakugoka having hearing disability. Ippuku performs Rakugo using sign language and contributes to create the deaf culture that people with hearing disability can enjoy. Rakugo was first performed in sign language around 1979 when a professional Rakugoka called Mr.Katura Fukudanji hurt his throat and lost his voice temporarily. At that time he saw the persons who use sign language by chance.He learned about sign language and started to use it to perform Rakugo. Ippuku became the pupil of Mr.Katsura Fukudannji, one of the originators of Sign Language Rakugo, in 1980.
While practicing performing Rakugo, Ippuku noticed that a story just interpreted from original Rakugo into sign language did not attract the deaf audience. Such a story could not make them laugh. There is a difference between “laugh cultures” of the deaf and the others. Therefore in order to make deaf people laugh, the original story should be arranged furthermore. Ippuku studied hard with his deaf colleagues, consulted with his master, and arranged the original story a little to be suitable for the deaf audience. For example, he included topics that were more familiar to the deaf people and also had a deaf person as a main character of a story. Thus he began to create his own Rakugo to be performed in sign language. He was always thinking, ‘Sign Language Rakugo can become the deaf culture in a true sense, only when we can make deaf people laugh.” Such efforts were recognized and he was promoted to be a professional Rakugoka with hearing disability for the first time in Japan. He changed his stage name to &ldquo:Deaf” Ippuku and left his master in 2001.
In 1980s, sign language was prevailing in Japan and groups of people learning sign language were being established one after another all over the country. In such a situation, Sign Language Rakugo also drew a great deal of attention.Ippuku gave 70 to 80 performances in a year in his heyday and spent busy days as an active performer. In 1991 he performed Sign Language Rakugo at the World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf held in Tokyo and attracted people from all over the world. He was highly appreciated, as “Rakugo is a culture that has a real Japanese taste and since it is performed in sign language, it means that Japan has a true deaf culture, which is wonderful.” This gave Ippuku a strong self-confidence. Besides, he was asked and actually started to visit overseas to perform Sign Language Rakugo. So far he performed at the congress and festival of the Deaf in Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom and so on, and now performs one or two overseas performances a year. In his first overseas performance, he performed in front of a group of about 50 deaf people. He was worried if his joke could make them laugh, but he made up his mind to perform what could be understood just by looking at and sat on a cushion. When he started the performance, all the audience burst into laughter and he realized that sign language was universal. Sometimes he has to perform without an interpreter, so he usually arranges to arrive at the country several days beforehand, learns the local sign language and performs by using both the local sign language and his own gestures. Occasionally, local people give him advice on sign language as well as the idea of stories. Thus his Rakugo has been more improved and enriched through the overseas performances.
As for the domestic performances, he appears in Rakugo programs all over the country. These opportunities are usually given by his friends and acquaintances. However, as the Japanese economic conditions deteriorated, the requests for him to perform Sign Language Rakugo have decreased to be around 50 in a year since about 5 years ago. There are no sponsors or cooperators so the financial situation is quite severe.
At present, about 30 people are actively performing Sign Language Rakugo and around 25 of them are deaf, while about 5 have difficulty in hearing. The number is decreasing, as they get older, though there used to be about 50 performers. Ippuku has 5 pupils now who perform in many places around the country. They mainly perform for the sign language learning circles by attending various events such as Christmas parties.
Here are a few comic stories.
<Love affair of the Statue of Liberty>
As you know, Miss Liberty lives in New York in the United States. She has no boyfriend and asked me to introduce someone very nice. I said, “OK. In Japan, a very big man called Daibutsu-sama (the big statute of Buddha) lives in Nara. Let me introduce him to you.” Daibutsu-sama immediately left from Nara and swam across the Pacific Ocean to see Miss Liberty and they started dating.
<A Mole of Daibutsu>
Daibutsu-sama in Japan has a very big mole on his forehead. I asked him, “How did you come to have such a mole?” He said, “Once I went to see my sweetheart, Miss Liberty in America, and kissed her when we said goodbye. Just then the sharp edge of her crown hit my forehead and hurt it very seriously. That scar has become a mole.”
Studying and passing down Sign Language Rakugo
When performing Sign Language Rakugo, the performer has to exaggerate his gesture. However, as he sits on his knees on the stage, his gesture naturally becomes small. Besides, if he uses sign language that is usually used in daily conversation, it cannot be seen from the audience very well because the movement is too small. Therefore he has to improve the gesture by making it larger and clearer. In addition, there are certain acting for which performers have to use a fan and a hand towel when performing Rakugo. Especially in case of classical Rakugo (the one with a fixed story that has been passed down from the past), the traditional acting must not be changed. For example, there is a rule that the gesture of drinking sake (Japanese liquor made from rice) should be expressed by using a fan. However, if the performer uses a fan, he will not be able to use sign language. Nevertheless, he cannot perform without using a fan. Therefore, it is indispensable to study how a performer can keep a good balance between using sign language and the traditional acting.
In addition, in classical Rakugo, it is often the case that the meaning of the words are not clear or there are no suitable sign language expressing certain words, since the words used are too archaic. If the meaning of the word is not clear, the performer looks it up in dictionaries and replaces it with an easier word. Sometimes he asks the elderly what it means. Modern sign language is much different from the one in the past and regrettably, the important parts of the old sign language are rapidly being lost. The sign language that the elderly used to use had quite interesting expressions, which can be very helpful when performing Sign Language Rakugo. Ippuku voluntarily helps the old people by attending them to go to hospital and taking care of them, and is always working hard to learn their sign language. He believes that it is an important job to keep the old sign language and pass it down to the next generation through Rakugo, as well as to study how to express difficult expressions of classical Rakugo more clearly.
Bringing world peace through sign language
Ippuku teaches not only Sign Language Rakugo but also sign language itself. He visits many primary and junior high schools and talks about people with disabilities using plain words, so that these children without hearing disability can deepen their understandings of the disabled. For example, in his speech he says that deaf people communicate by using sign language and they should not be discriminated. He also teaches basic sign language such as greetings, in which everyone shows much interest. He is sure that if all the children learn some sign language, when they grow up and meet deaf people in future, they will be able to understand one another more deeply and become true friends.
Besides, Ippuku never forgets to pay attention to people with other disabilities. In order to get more profound understanding of people with disabilities, he includes stories about troubles that the blind, the people in wheel chair and the parents of people with intellectual disabilities experience, to his original modern Rakugo (which he creates himself getting the idea from daily life and topics familiar to everyone). For instance, he made up a story after meeting with Mother Teresa. When they first met, she began talking to Ippuku very excitedly and seemed to be complaining about something. Ippuku tried to understand what she said, “Why don’t the Japanese help people in wheel chair, when there is no elevator and they are in trouble. Japanese people are so unkind.” Ippuku felt that it was the shame of Japan and since then he has been talking about this in his Rakugo so that the Japanese will understand more about the disabled and how they can help them.
When Ippuku receives a request to perform Rakugo, the first thing he asks is who the target audience is. Are they all deaf? Or are there any people with hearing difficulty that do not understand sign language? Or are the blind people included in the audience? According to the situation, the preparation of the hall, reference materials and even the story to be performed should be changed. He prepares audio equipments to read out sign language, OHP to show captions and reference materials in Braille, depending on the needs of the audience. It takes time and is quite difficult to make reference materials and prepare everything necessary, but if he declined a request to perform Rakugo for such people with disabilities, he thought it would mean discrimination. The same is true of the overseas performances. He has his Rakugo interpreted first to American Sign Language, again to German sign language and then finally to German speech. As in the World Congress of the World Federation of the Deaf, he makes sure that everyone can understand through many interpreters.
Whatever Ippuku does implies his wish “to respect deaf culture.” Taking an example of the abolishment of deaf school in Italy, he insists that it may result in the loss of deaf culture and that people should protect deaf schools. He does not intend to make money by performing Rakugo. He just would like people to know that there is deaf culture in Japan and to understand more about it through Rakugo. Moreover, he wishes to introduce that there are deaf cultures all over the world.
Ippuku has a dream to raise fund through charity Rakugo performances to establish “Ippuku School” in the countries where schools are destroyed by earthquakes or where there are no deaf school.
Ippuku also believes that world peace can be realized through the strong relationship among deaf people around the world. In his original Rakugo, there is a story about a deaf person sent to a battlefield. In the story, a war breaks out because of the North Korea issue or abduction issue, and a deaf person is sent to a battlefield. When the situation turns to be real tense, however, he sees that there is also a deaf person in North Korea, and changes his mind because the deaf should not and cannot fight one another. Although they belong to different countries, they are both deaf, suffering from the same disability. In the last, they shake hands and become good friends, saying that let's stop the war.
In this way, Ippuku wishes to keep sending various messages to the world through Sign Language Rakugo.