In late October 2023, we held the event “RAKUGO to the World” inviting TATEKAWA Shinoharu (RAKUGO-ka, a RAKUGO Storyteller) for exchange students at the library. Not only exchange students from all over the world but also other Sophia students were attending this event and it livened up.

The event got started with KOBANASHI (a short funny story), and the participants could not help laughing at a stretch. Mr. TATEKAWA showed two performances, the first one was “Tenshiki” (「転失気」) and the second one was “Kinshu-banya” (「禁酒番屋」). In pauses of the show, he explained a fun story regarding useful but complicated as having some different meanings in one Japanese word, for example, “Yabai” (やばい), “Daijoubu” (大丈夫), “Suimasen” (すいません) and “an interval” peculiar to Japanese conversation. Since most of the participants were interested in Japanese language, this story got their attention. During the Q&A session, many interesting questions were raised  “what was the opinion of other RAKUGO Storytellers when you started RAKUGO performance in English?”, “Give some advice to my mother who is learning RAKUGO in English” etc.

Thanks to Mr. TATEKAWA’s passionate performance, all the time during the event was filled with laughter. We have received the participants’ warm comments such as “it was wonderful, I’d like to see it again!”. After the event, the participants seemed to become better acquainted sharing their opinions about this event.