Onstage, Niyo Katsura wore a fragile pink kimono. With her petite body and high-pitched voice, she might move extra simply for a school undergraduate than a 35-year-old performer of one among Japan’s oldest comedic arts.
Yet when she reached the purpose in her routine the place she impersonated a drunken salesman — a middle-age man — the viewers laughed heartily because the character slurred his phrases and stabbed himself within the arm in a raucously unsuccessful effort to indicate off the medicinal properties of a mysterious oil.
Katsura’s uncanny capacity to painting a spread of drunks and fools, lots of them males, has introduced her acclaim in rakugo, a classical type of Japanese comedic storytelling. Last month, she grew to become the primary girl to win a prestigious prize for rakugo newcomers within the award’s 50-year historical past.
After taking the trophy, Katsura proclaimed, “Do you see me now, old men?”
Over the almost three-century existence of rakugo, the slapstick cousin of Japanese stage arts like Kabuki and noh, most of its performers have been males who painting a number of characters of each genders. Since girls entered the occupation simply over 40 years in the past, they’ve confronted resistance from fellow artists, critics and audiences. Women signify simply 1 in 16 of the near 1,000 rakugo artists now working professionally.
Katsura’s victory was a milestone not solely due to her gender, but additionally as a result of she carried out a conventional story that includes all-male characters. Some earlier feminine performers, in an effort to woo audiences unsettled by girls appearing as males, transformed male protagonists in classical tales into girls.
Niyo Katsura performs rakugo, a classical type of storytelling, in Osaka. (Shiho Fukada/The New York Times)
But Katsura was decided to inform the previous tales the best way they have been initially conceived. “I wanted to perform rakugo the exact same way that men do,” stated Katsura, who acquired an ideal rating from all 5 judges on the competitors panel, sponsored by NHK, the general public broadcaster. “I feel that history has been changed.”
Rakugo is an oral custom through which tales — about 600 of that are in circulation amongst performers as we speak — are handed down by masters to apprentices. The artwork kind has strict guidelines: Performers stay seated on a cushion within the middle of a largely naked stage, and so they use only a few props, akin to a folding fan or a cotton hand towel.
Stories vary from about 10-Half-hour and have dozens of characters, all of whom are conveyed by modifications in facial features, voice and actions of the physique above the waist.
“I have never seen anything as good as her version of the story she performed,” stated Kenichi Horii, a cultural critic who watched Katsura’s prizewinning act. “For the audience, you just want it to be fun. You don’t necessarily care if the performer is male or female.”
Growing up in Osaka, Katsura — who was born Fumi Nishii and makes use of a stage identify — was raised by mother and father who weren’t legally married, which is uncommon in Japan. The family was much less inflexible about gender roles than extra conventional households.
Niyo Katsura backstage after her first set whereas performing rakugo, a classical type of storytelling. (Shiho Fukada/The New York Times)
“My mother always said it does not make sense for us to say ‘because you are a boy’ or ‘because you are a girl,’” she stated.
While finding out Buddhist artwork in school in Kyoto, she attended stay rakugo performances. Her favourite characters reminded her of sophistication clowns whom lecturers punished. “I thought, these people are saying foolish things and people are openly laughing at them,” she stated. “I was very drawn to that.”
She might see it was powerful for ladies onstage. When a girl carried out, “the audience wouldn’t laugh.” She learn a ebook by a well known rakugo artist who wrote that girls made audiences “uncomfortable.”
After graduating, she sought out a mentor prepared to take her on for coaching. The first time she stood outdoors the dressing room door of Yoneji Katsura, a seasoned rakugo practitioner in Osaka, Japan’s comedic capital, he instructed her he wouldn’t settle for any girls as apprentices. The second time she requested, he refused once more.
“I could not believe that such a strange girl wanted to be my apprentice,” recalled Yoneji Katsura, 64. “I had no confidence that I could raise a female apprentice.”
He recalled seeing her usually at his performances, usually sitting within the entrance row. He stated he even heard a voice from above, urging him to take an opportunity on her. The third time she got here knocking, the veteran performer agreed to let her observe his different apprentices observe.
For about six months, whereas working half time at a grocery store, she visited Yoneji Katsura’s house and sat in on rehearsals. In 2011, Yoneji Katsura formally accepted her right into a three-year apprenticeship and gave her the stage identify “Niyo,” which suggests two leaves. She additionally took on the household identify that he had inherited from his mentor.
But regardless that he recognises her presents, Yoneji Katsura is just not sure girls actually belong within the rakugo world. “The basis of rakugo is that it is an art form that men should perform,” he stated.
To Niyo Katsura, it’s only logical that “if men can perform women, then women should be able to perform men.” Over time, she adopted a signature gender-neutral bowl haircut that followers name “the mushroom.” Yet she by no means resorts to decreasing her voice to play males or utilizing different strategies she believes would strike a false be aware.
The 12 months earlier than Niyo Katsura gained the NHK competitors, she was a finalist. One choose instructed her she wanted extra life expertise to present texture to her efficiency.
Over the summer time, Katsura contracted the coronavirus. She was frightened however puzzled if it’d someway deepen her artwork. “Maybe this is a bad thing to say, but I thought, maybe I am one step closer to being a good rakugo performer because I am experiencing this feeling that I never had before,” she stated.
After her successful efficiency final month, Gontaro Yanagiya, the choose who had given her the harshest suggestions, stated he cried with pleasure to see Katsura’s progress. “It was like she came back just to shove that performance in my face,” Yanagiya stated.
Katsura acknowledged that she had reached the heights she had due to the ladies who got here earlier than her.
Tsuyu no Miyako, 65, who’s broadly acknowledged as the primary girl to achieve fashionable rakugo, recalled how male colleagues would inform vulgar tales about girls or slap her on the buttocks. She stated she realized to slap again, however largely needed to settle for the remedy.
“I just thought that was the world I signed up for,” Tsuyu stated.
Onstage in Osaka earlier this month, Katsura instructed two tales, together with a 30-minute classical story a couple of father who orders one among his craftsmen to seek for a potential romantic curiosity for his lovesick son.
In Katsura’s hand, a folded fan grew to become a sword, a pair of chopsticks and an extended smoking pipe. With a roll of her shoulders, she evoked the slouching stroll of a person, and with a stroke of her chin, she evinced a beard.
At one level, Katsura invited a veteran male artist, Hanamaru Hayashiya, 56, to hitch her onstage. She instructed him that sure widespread phrases in conventional rakugo tales now sounded sexist. The phrase usually used for spouse, “yomehan,” for instance, combines the Chinese characters for “woman” and “house.”
“I don’t think these words fit the world we are living in now,” Katsura stated.
“Words are very difficult,” Hayashiya stated. “I guess this shows that rakugo is a man’s world.”
In the dressing room after the present, Katsura folded her kimonos and mirrored briefly on her efficiency.
“They were a good audience,” Katsura stated. “They laughed.”
This article initially appeared in The New York Times.