I first met Mr.Katsura Sunshine（桂三輝）, the great master of “Rakugo” Storytelling last September, 2024. After Prof. Shin Osanai’s “Tricultural” lecture on Broadway musical given at Keio Academy of New York on September 21st, I was invited to Mr.Katsura Sunshine’s Rakugo Off Broadway performance at New World Stages in Manhattan, which not only entertained but also enlightened me on the future of the transpacific imagination. I was especially amazed by the extent to which he is familiar with the cultural distinction between Tokyo and Osaka. Thanks to his associate producer Ms. Yumi Shinozaki, we also participated in the post-performance reception.

Katsura Sunshine was born in Canada in 1970. Completing in 2011 his three-year rakugo apprenticeship with the giant of Japanese “Kamigata” rakugo Katsura Sanshi as mentor, he came to perform English rakugo in a variety of countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, France, Nepal, South Africa, Thailand, Hong Kong, Australia and others. Thus, he gained global fame.

Now let me confess that in 2010, fifteen years ago, I dismissed one of my zemi students’ proposal for BA thesis on rakugo as ridiculous; being an active member of Keio University’s Rakugo Association, this girl Ms. Kanako Amagai wanted to write a thesis on English Rakugo. Since the department of English of Keio University has highly esteemed canonical authors in Anglo-American literary history, I immediately considered this topic unworthy of academic research. However, it turned out that I myself was hopelessly ignorant and absolutely wrong; her thesis “A Trans-Pacific History of Rakugo: Between Japanese and American Literatures” completed in 2011 was so resourceful and insightful as to arouse my interest in this new form of postmodern Japonism. This former student selected the wonderfully appropriate topic not only for her BA thesis but also for the study of contemporary American theatrical arts, which will give tremendous impacts upon Japanese culture in the near future.

From the literary historical perspective, the poetic heritage of Keio University is responsible for the popularization of Japonism in western countries. Mr. Yone Noguchi, who had studied at Keio university between 1891 and 93, became famous as an international poet in the United States and the UK with his collections of poems Seen and Unseen (1896) and The Voice of the Valley (1898) and ended up by teaching Anglo-American literature in the department of English of his alma mater. Being a distinguished poet in English speaking countries, Noguchi was invited to give a lecture at the University of Oxford in 1914, in which he foregrounded the analogy between Walt Whitman and Matsuo Basho, the Japanese master of Haiku. This is the moment Haiku became so influential in western countries that following in the footsteps of Ezra Pound as the champion of literary Japonism, so many western poets incorporated Haiku poetics into their modernist works. Hence the global influence of Haiku on today’s world literature.

Likewise, being the exceptionally talented disciple of Katsura Sanshi, Katsura Sunshine will revolutionize the narratology of Rakugo through his global and transnational activities, marking the advent of post-Japonism in the 21^st century.