Kishihachi's Opening: A Procession of Lights
Column 'Kishihachi's Opening,' episode 5: rakugo performer Kishihachi Ryutei, reading of the lantern-like procession observed through Window 1, reflects on the lights his own people set out for 'Window Day.'
In this morning's paper, I read that a procession of lights had been seen through the window — hundreds of them, moving down a hillside street. I found my hand stopping on the page for a while.
We have our own small lantern custom, too — Window Day. Its origin has several competing stories, and no one has ever settled on one. Both the July observance and the September one amount to little more than the shopkeepers along Shiomibashi Street setting out lanterns "at around seven," with no signal to start. It's nothing on the scale of the procession on the other side, and there's no one watching us back. Even so, when we set a small light out on the windowsill, what we feel isn't quite the sense of marking an occasion — it's closer to the sense of doing something, toward something.
According to the article, no one knows what the procession on the other side is for. The window keepers keep saying they won't pretend to understand. I think that's an admirable way to carry on. The truth is, we don't really know the origin of our own windowsill lights either. We just keep doing the same thing, at the same hour, every year, without knowing.
In rakugo, there's a kind of craft in finding something amusing precisely because you don't understand it. Solve the mystery, and the story's over. Reading about the procession of lights made me a little happy, in fact — it made me think that maybe the other side, too, has things it keeps doing without understanding why, same as us.
Tonight, before I step onto the stage, I mean to light one lantern at the window. What it's for, I still don't know — not today, either.
