Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū

Episode 8

Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju has, at long last, become a great show. That's not to say that it wasn't already good before this point, but it was more limited in scope, as a character study of its deeply repressed lead. With this episode, however, all of its elements have blossomed into a fully coordinated symphony. All three of the principal characters now have fully fleshed out motivations, working in tandem to create the inevitable tragic outcome. This show's perspective on its chosen subject – rakugo – is a mirror for how individuals relate to changing societal norms, forming a critique of how society's standards for presentation along various lines (gender, sexuality, age, class) provoke the show's tragic outcome.

This episode is structured around a series of scenes exploring the players in the central love triangle. Kikuhiko wants Sukeroku, Sukeroku wants Miyokichi, and Miyokichi wants Kikuhiko, all for their own distinct reasons. While previous episodes have elaborated on Kikuhiko's feelings in depth, our other players have mostly been ciphers. This episode changed everything by cutting right to the heart of these people and their various desires. For all three of them, their romantic and artistic feelings are extensions of a deeper pain. Since everything has finally been revealed, I'll go through the characters in order to sum up what we've learned.

First, there's Miyokichi. In the last write up, I said that one of the things I wanted most out of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju was insight into this character's perspective. As the primary woman in the cast, her main role was to be a disruptive force in Kikuhiko's life. The show was sympathetic to her plight – it did a good job conveying the depth of her pain – but it never elaborated on why she felt this way. I'm excited to say that this week finally broke her silence, which I wasn't actually expecting. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shuinju has been, up to this point, so strategically withholding of other perspectives from Kikuhiko's. This episode signals the show's transformation into a tragedy where multiple active players each contribute to their own fates.

So it turns out that Miyokichi has never had real feelings for Kikuhiko – she's just clinging to the idea of being his wife as an emotional crutch. This is revealed in her first scene alone with Sukeroku. Kikuhiko goes on his tour with Yakumo Sr., leaving Miyokichi and Sukeroku behind. He barely gives Sukeroku any warning and doesn't tell poor Miyokichi at all. Since she was already struggling with Kikuhiko's frigidity, this leaves her devastated. However, she accepts the way things are with resignation. When she runs into Sukeroku at a festival, the two have a heart-to-heart where she tells her story – up to this point, Miyokichi's life has been a series of tragedies. Her family was killed in the war. She fell in love with a man who took her to Manchuria and abandoned her there. She was forced into prostitution to survive and saved only by becoming Yakumo Sr.'s new mistress. Now she holds out no hope for her own personal happiness, desiring only a stable place to belong. Miyokichi thinks that being mistreated by men – emotionally neglected and eventually discarded – is the only mode of interaction between the sexes. If a woman gets lucky, she can permanently latch down a man through marriage. But this is a difficult for Miyokichi, with her checkered sexual past. Her own master, Yakumo Sr., is already encouraging Kiku-san to dump Miyokichi and marry a “proper” woman. Like another third wheel in an infamously queer anime, Miyokichi has given up on love. She only wants stability to survive, but deep down, she still possesses the desire to be wanted for who she is. Sukeroku, empathetic to her pain, embraces her. It's a comforting gesture, but Miyokichi – unused to men caring about her emotional wellbeing – is turned off, interpreting it as sexual. Of course, that's when Kikuhiko arrives on the scene.

There's an odd malice to Kiku's approach for someone who cares so little about Miyokichi romantically. His real rage probably stems from her encroaching on Sukeroku. Over the course of his journey, Kiku-san has only buckled down further on his self-denial. He's somehow convinced himself that he's only breaking up with Miyokichi because Yakumo Sr. forbids their union. Uh-huh. Whatever you say, dude. In the fallout, he has his own heart-to-heart with Sukeroku where they discuss their futures as performers. Sukeroku is still committed to a future where the two of them work together to ensure the survival of rakugo as an artform, but he also realizes that they're about to take divergent paths. This brings up an important aspect of the show that I haven't talked about very much: the struggle for rakugo's survival during a time of rapid social change. At the beginning of the 20th century, film and television arrived. They immediately cut into rakugo's niche as widespread populist entertainment, shifting it from a cutting-edge staple of art and entertainment to a traditional, institutionalized one. Sukeroku sees that rakugo cannot survive into the future if left on its own. Film and radio will fulfill the same function better and replace rakugo in popularity. So Sukeroku wants to make his rakugo into something that can compete with television/radio, something that a mass audience will still seek out, even if that means turning his back on the establishment. His vision for Kikuhiko in this partnership is to become the person who maintains the traditional aspects of rakugo. Considering the circumstances, they decide to end their cohabitation. The episode ends on a shot of Sukeroku walking down the street, his face obscured by shadows and low angles, inscrutable and ominous.

Sukeroku's root desire is to avenge his childhood caretaker, the previous Sukeroku. Sukeroku Sr. was a penniless rakugo performer, a former disciple of the 6th Yakumo who was likely expelled for not following proper institutional decorum. Our Sukeroku follows in his footsteps as a masterful and popular performer who refuses to pay the dues assigned to him by his superiors in rakugo. He wants to prove that the cabal of zenza are holding rakugo back, and that he doesn't need their approval to succeed. That's why he remains so unkempt and uncooperative, even when it's self-destructive to his career – on some level, it's just deliberately stubborn rebellion. The fact that Kikuhiko only learns about this so late into their relationship suggests that their intimacy has been based on mutual assumptions about one another. It also suggests a small way that Sukeroku might hold some resentment for Kikuhiko (if that's even possible for that golden retriever of a man). Sukeroku knows that, despite his greater talent, Kikuhiko will always be the favored son because he's willing and able to play the game. Now that Kikuhiko has finally discovered his own voice as an artist, Sukeroku's fate has been sealed. So they decide to break up their symbiotic existence, at least in terms of living together. In the end, Sukeroku gives Kikuhiko his phallus fan – originally a gift he received from Sukeroku Sr. It has Sukeroku's name written on the fold, and there's a 99.9% chance that the show's ending will reveal that an elder Kikuhiko still uses this fan. It's as inevitable as his own friend's death.

Ultimately, the tragedy in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju stems from the fact that these three characters aren't allowed to be themselves. As a man, Kikuhiko harbors unacceptable romantic and sexual desire for another man. As a woman, Miyokichi is given no options for survival outside of attaching herself to a man, but her sexual past makes it difficult for her to get married, so she cannot secure a permanent living. As an artist, Sukeroku either can not or will not play along with the system behind the institution of rakugo. Societal heterosexism and nepotism fosters the repression, sorrow, and anger that destroys these people. The show's fixation on the theater is ultimately feeding into a larger message about how society forces individuals to perform prescribed roles that destroy them. The heterosexual man. The proper wife or accommodating mistress. The youth who waits patiently behind his elders, regardless of superior talent and vision. All the world's a stage, the roles are all assigned, and every performance is a tragedy.

Kikuhiko looks like he'll grow into a person who's mastered the mask, repressing his true desires entirely. Sukeroku is a person who refuses to obscure his desires, which will somehow lead to his death. Miyokichi is a person who tries to maintain the performance, but quickly falls into despair when she cannot. My suspicion is that she'll self-destruct, taking both herself and Sukeroku in a final act of vengeance against society's impossible standards for her and condemning the tortured young man who served as the final nail in her coffin. But before that happens, she needs to give birth to Sukeroku's daughter, Konatsu. Temporally, we've got a ways to go before the lovers' suicide that will inevitably punctuate this tragedy, but on a narrative level, it's never loomed closer. In the end, we see Kikuhiko practicing Shinigami - the routine that he opened the show with – to signal the encroaching inevitability of his transformation into the Seventh Yakumo. I suspect that the show is building our hero up into a villain – sympathy for the devil – but the exact nature of Kikuhiko's future sin remains unknown. Next week, he'll finally have his long-needed conversation with Miyokichi – an act that will likely accelerate everything.

The episode is bookended with scenes featuring their master, Yakumo Sr., where he expresses anxiety about his legacy as a performer. Another master is showing off his child, who he intends to make his heir as a performer, but Yakumo Sr. has no biological children. This fear permeates his adoption of Kikuhiko and Sukeroku, who were both imperfect heirs – Kikuhiko was untalented, Sukeroku was improper. The goal of rakugo as an institution is not to change according to the times, but to successfully reproduce itself with each subsequent generation. Yakumo Sr. bears that burden, and he feels unsuccessful to some extent. Living up to the past is a constant source of anxiety for everyone who inhabits an institution. This will be even worse for Kikuhiko, who – not being attracted to women – may not want to reproduce biologically. Even the Gay Stuff serves as a metaphor for the roadblocks tradition can face over time. Things change in the world around us, and repressed desires for something different will never stop exerting themselves.

This is all reminding me more and more of last year's Yurikuma Arashi. Both shows are principally concerned with how individuals with “deviant” desires chafe against societal expectations. But while Yurikuma Arashi ultimately became a deliberate aversion of the tragic end deemed inevitable for stories about queer people, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju looks like it'll be diving whole-hog into its darkest outcome. This show is realist, not surrealist. There's no chance of Sukeroku turning into a car and whisking Sukeroku away to a place without roads. The possibility for a better world only lies in a future where societal expectations have changed – that's Konatsu and Yotaro's future, not Kikuhiko's present. By then, it'll be too late for him, but he will have the opportunity to prevent his symbolic children from suffering the same fate. Or he could become the same force that ruined his young self and condemn the both of them. But that's the question at the heart of all tragedy – can humanity learn not to repeat the past, even if that prevention comes at the expense of misery's company? Art forms may go in and out of favor, but these feelings are forever.

Grade: A+

Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.