Shōwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjū

Episode 9

It's the eve of Kikuhiko and Sukeroku's shin'uchi promotion. The head of the Rakugo Association gives them a talking to, revealing that he was personally against their advancement. Sukeroku responds to his contempt in kind, stopping only when prompted by Kikuhiko. Then, for his celebratory performance, Sukeroku does the head's signature routine, making their relationship even worse. (The routine is about a smooth talker who makes a living mooching off of people. Tempting hubris there, Suke.) When Yakumo Sr. scolds him over it, they get into a huge argument. Sukeroku admits his individualistic intention to make rakugo change with the times. This angers his master, who values rakugo as a static communal tradition. Eventually, Sukeroku goes too far, insulting his master's entire performance style. Now that things have gotten personal, Yakumo Sr. goes for the low blow – he knows that Sukeroku wants to inherit the name Yakumo, so he reveals that he's giving it to Kikuhiko instead. Enraged, Sukeroku raises his hand against his master, and the current Yakumo expels him on the spot, forcing him out of the house. Sukeroku sits outside, shocked that the institution he criticized so much has finally decided to dispose of him.

In a parallel breakup, Kikuhiko has his long awaited real talk with Miyokichi. In an unusual deviation from the show's realism, this encounter is shot in an expressionistic dreamlike way, with Miyokichi lounging in a hail of flower petals. Despite Kikuhiko's mewling entreaties, Miyokichi knows that he wants to break up with her. She tries to emotionally manipulate him into staying in the relationship, once again to no avail. When Miyokichi realizes that there's nothing she can do to make him stay, she breaks down, knowing that her last hope for a stable future has finally proved fruitless. This is the point where, if Miyokichi were a magical girl in Puella Magi Madoka Magica, she would turn into a witch, as she swears eternal vengeance on Kikuhiko for his rejection. Just like in Madoka, this is really misplaced anger toward a world that gave her no options. Later on, she runs into Sukeroku, who is conveniently devastated following his expulsion from the Rakugo Association. Miyokichi, performing her role as an agent of comfort, takes him into her arms. Since she couldn't have Kikuhiko, she'll take away the person he does love – Sukeroku.

Cut to a few months later. Kikuhiko is fully established as a shin'uchi. He looks miserable. His conversation with a reporter reveals that the critical tide turned on Sukeroku following his expulsion. Kikuhiko treats the interviewer with distant condescension, fully becoming the version of him we met in the first episode, now as a younger man. Well, he's not completely there yet. He continues to outwardly value Sukeroku's rakugo and throws the reporter out for talking smack about him. Later, he has a conversation with his master, who's looking very haggard after his wife's death. He tells Kikuhiko that he'll be the one to inherit the Yakumo name, but Kikuhiko refuses, saying that Sukeroku deserves it. Yakumo only reasserts Sukeroku's expulsion, saying that the ungrateful apprentice hasn't even tried to make amends. Kikuhiko is devastated.

We switch over to Sukeroku, who appears to have spent all this time in a drunken stupor. He's been maintaining a sexual relationship with Miyokichi, and they have an interesting conversation in bed. Miyokichi confirms that her specific demeanor around different men is all an act. She tried to bait Kiku with a more cultured and proper look, while Sukeroku is clearly attracted to something trashier. (This also explains why her look was dramatically different in her first appearance at the end of episode four. She was dressing up to suit whatever Yakumo Sr. liked.) She still fantasizes about Kikuhiko, but seems content to keep Sukeroku trapped. Now that she's pregnant, he's really obligated to stay, which probably also explains the continued drunken stupor. This revealing conversation is unusually expressionistic once again. While they're laying in bed, the shadow from the windowpane frames them like a cage. There's also a fishbowl in the room, foreshadowing a watery death in their future. This more overt staging also signals the degree to which Miyokichi is in control of how others perceive her. She played on her dependence to keep Kikuhiko from leaving her, and now she's doing the same for Sukeroku, but it's working much better on him.

This all culminates in a confrontation between Kikuhiko and Sukeroku. Sukeroku arrives at Kikuhiko's apartment to announce that he's moving to the country – at Miyokichi's behest, of course. Kikuhiko grows despondent when Sukeroku says that he has no intention of returning to rakugo, leading the future Yakumo to have a breakdown. Turning his back to his friend, Sukeroku reveals that he's always been jealous of Kiku. In his eyes, Bon was always the master's favorite: the true apprentice. By contrast, Shin always felt like a barely-tolerated stray. As Sukeroku rejects his embrace, Kikuhiko realizes that he's made a critical mistake. He was so obsessed with his own pain that he overlooked how Sukeroku might have also been hurting. Their jealousy was mutual, a fissure that extends down to the foundation of their friendship. And now that the house has begun falling around them, it's too late to do anything about it. Kikuhiko ends the episode clinging to Sukeroku's back and a faceless image of his friend. Except now he knows, for the first time, that this is what he's always done.

And I thought last episode was intense! It's like Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju took all my praise last week and chokeslammed it on the floor while screaming “THAT WASN'T EVEN MY FINAL FORM.” So I'll try to keep this brief. Here's an updated summary of the three major players in this tragedy and their fatal flaws.

- Kikuhiko's pedestalization of Sukeroku and obsessesion with his own problems made him overlook his best friend's emotional issues. He also underestimated the depth of Miyokichi's pain and the extent to which stringing her along would hurt her.

- Sukeroku refused to respect the Rakugo Association, but also cared about its approval enough to break down when he was inevitably expelled. He wanted to have it both ways as an artist, but he couldn't.

- Miyokichi just wants to see the world burn. Kikuhiko's rejection was the final straw for her in a life filled with instability and sorrow, and now she just wants to take someone down with her. As revenge against Kikuhiko, she chooses Sukeroku, the person he cares about most. Now that she's pregnant, she has him firmly in her clutches due to the societal obligations and guilt associated with fathering and abandoning a child. Her ominous expression upon watching Kikuhiko's first successful performance now makes sense – she related with the character of the aging geisha, whose tragedy was being played for laughs by the man who rejected her.

The tragedy playing out right now is both nobody's fault and everybody's fault. Everybody is righteous in the fact that the institutions that govern their lives are unfair. At the same time, they've all personally wronged one another in response to their own pain. People inevitably make a ton of mistakes in the face of a nigh-unappeasable social situation like this. Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju has spent most of its runtime setting up the deep, precarious emotional triangle between our three leads, but now that house of cards has now been toppled. We know how it all ends – the first episode told us as much – and as of this moment, there's nowhere to go but down.

In the past two weeks, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju has addressed all the issues I ever had with the beginning. The story was initially fixed to Kikuhiko's perspective as a deliberate ploy to make us feel the injustice when we realized who Miyokichi and Sukeroku really were. Miyokichi is a complex and interesting woman who exists as more than just a thorn in Kikuhiko's side. Sukeroku is a troubled and ambitious artist whose jovial personality hid the same feelings of jealousy that Kikuhiko felt toward him. From the visuals to the various themes to the sheer bloody pathos, Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju is a complex and exquisite show that deserves in-depth examination. Bravo.

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.