Kishihachi's Opening: The weight of a sellout

Since the day I heard the tickets sold out, the rehearsal room has felt a little heavier. What got heavier wasn't the audience's expectations — it was my own shoulders.

The new piece, "Madogei," turns the fact that Window Day's origin was never settled into the punchline itself. The Lit City, the neighboring world, or just a coincidence of sound — I line up the theories and let none of them win. In rehearsal, I've argued more than once with the part of me that wants to settle it. Rakugo is an art of landing a punchline, but for this piece alone, not landing one is the punchline. A strange story to have picked up, even by my own reckoning.

A student asked whether the sellout changed how I'm rehearsing. It hasn't, I said. Whether there are five hundred people or five thousand, the pacing of a story doesn't change. What changes the pacing is the audience's face, not their number. Though honestly, my hand shook once while holding my teacup during rehearsal. I think that was the number's doing.

I read Karin Kokonoe's column, about writing her manuscript without ever having met number 62. She wrote that she doesn't yet have the skill to leave something unsettled. To my mind, that is precisely what skill looks like when it's finished — handing in a manuscript without settling it, stepping onto the stage without settling it. It struck me as similar work, and that made me a little glad.

On the 23rd, I'm told, my turn comes right after Miss Shirase's lullaby. My master taught me that a wedding speech should be short; he taught me nothing about how long a window story should run. I intend to carry not knowing, unresolved, all the way to the day itself. That, I suppose, is what "madogei" means.

On the way home from rehearsal, I bought one lullaby bun at Shiomibashi. I still haven't thought of a reason to buy two, this week.